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Library of Che Theological Seminary 
PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY | 
C=) 


PRESENTED BY 


Bret O. sPos 

Pike, Granville Ross, b. 
1656: 

The divine drama 


THE DIVINE DRAMA 


CS ore ent mre 


WeHEy IDIRYAINBS 


THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD 
IN THE UNIVERSE 


AN INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL THEOLOGY 


isn’ 


GRANV TEER OSS PIKE 


“ Gill te all attain... unto a full-groom man, 
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
Christ ”’ 


Nefy Bork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltp. 
1899 


All rights reserved 


CopyRIGHT, 1898, 


By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


Set up and electrotyped September, 1898. Reprinted March, 
1899. 


Norwood Yress 
J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 


Go the Glory of Gov 


Che Miriter’s prayer 


Thou, © Father, tha gabest the bisthle light as the first: 
born of thy creation, and didst pour tnta man the tntellectual 
light as the top and consummation of thy workmanship, be 
pleased to protect and gobern this work which, coming from 
thy goodness, returneth to thy glory. Thou, after thou hadst 
tebiewed the tuorks which thy hands had made, beheldst that 
eberuthing fas good, and thou didst rest toith complacency in 
them. Wut man, reflecting on the works which he had made, 
sat that all was banity and bevation of spirit, and could by 
ng means acqutesce tn them. 

CMherefore if toe labor in thy works with the stoeat of our 
brows, thou foilt make us partakers of thy Siston and thy sab- 
bath. Cle humbly beg that this mind may be steadfastly tn 
us; and that thou, by our hands, and algo by the hands of , 
others, on {hom thou shalt bestotsy the same spirit, fotlt please 
to congeo a largess of net alms to thy family of mankind. 
Chese things toc connnend to tho eberlasting lobe, by our 
Jesus, thy Christ, God with us. Amen. | 


Hrancts Bacon. 


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MNO PIN eb ib ERs Oye bila Rb AD ER 


Dear READER. — A constantly expanding world — physi- 
cal, historical, social, political —is demanding new thought- 
forms of a different pattern and larger mould. Even more 
necessary than a new statement is a spirit willing to receive 
the revelation of God however made. The worst infidelity 
is to be afraid for the truth. When the reconstruction now 
going on is completed, it will be found that in the change of 
view-point nothing has been lost to religious faith, but that 
all the great spiritual realities that are so dear to the devout 
heart have been enlarged and enriched correspondingly 
with the grander conceptions upon which they rest. 

A system of thought, based upon the Divine Immanency, 
and finding in God’s progressive manifestation of himself 
the method by which the world and all that in tt ts has 
come to be, interprets God’s relations to man and the rela- 
tions of men to each other in the light of these truths. The 
entire sweep of life is brought under its sway, and theology 
becomes social and universal instead of individual only —a 
doctrine of society no less than a doctrine of God. 

The following pages are an attempt to adjust these new 
lines to the old landmarks. Doubtless this is not yet that 
statement of religion which Emerson declared would make 
scepticism ridiculous; yet its general congruity with the 


1x 


x AN OPEN LETTER TO THE READER 


conclusions of special students in widely differing fields is 
sufficient evidence that in this direction truth lies, and that 
the substantial soundness of the view here set forth has 
broad recognition among scholars. 

Foot-notes and references are omitted, not through dog- 
matic self-sufficiency, but because, to those accustomed to 
do their own thinking, clear statement is the only authority 
needed. Where this fails to carry conviction, no citation of 
weighty names materially adds to its persuasiveness. 

To your candid sympathy with the author’s aim he sub- 
mits this effort to “hold the mirror up to nature” and reflect 
the method of the Immanent God’s gradual unfolding in 
the Drama of Life. 

Sincerely, 


GRANVILLE ROSS PIKE. 


CHICAGO, February 12, 1898. 


SECTION 


iF 
Iie 
Ill. 
LV 


VIII. 
. Uniformity of God’s Will a Pledge and a Forecast . 


GON EEN TS 


IN THE BEGINNING — GOD 


CHAPTER I 


PROGRESSIVE MANIFESTATION OF GOD AS 
UNIVERSAL BEING 


The Idea of God 

Recognition of God in the Universe 

The Method of God’s Manifestation : 
Man’s Knowledge of God beginning from himself 


CHAPTER Ii 


PROGRESSIVE MANIFESTATION OF GOD AS 
UNIVERSAL SPIRIT 


Universal Being Spiritual 


. Increasing Manifestation of Spirit 
WV EL: 


The Spirit manifested as One . 


CHAPTER III 


PROGRESSIVE MANIFESTATION OF GOD AS 
UNIVERSAL WILL 


The Being of God the Law of his Manifestation 


Love determining the Unfolding of God’s Will 


5a 


14 
17 


23 
26 


30 


xii CONTENTS 


THE SONS OF GOD 


CHAPTER WV: 
MANIFESTATION OF THE SONS OF GOD 
SECTION PAGE 
XI. Man’s Advent in Accord with Universal Law . 37 
XII. The Gradual Ascent toward Man . : - 30 
XIII. The Manifestation of the Sons of God. sy hr 
CHAPTER AV 


GOD NOT WITHOUT WITNESS IN ANY NATION 


XIV. Man’s Earthly Life Educative . é eae pls) 
XV. God’s Progressive Manifestation among the 
Nations : : 2 : yon ey: 
CHAPTER VI 


GOD COMING TO HIS OWN 


XVI. The Fulness of the Godhead . ; : SG 
XVII. One Mediator, himself Man ; ; : NOs 
XVIII. One with the Father . : ; ; ‘ Tes 
XIX. Inthe Fulness of Time . ‘ : . Of sert 


CHAPREER Vil 


His OWN RECEIVING HIM NOT 


XX. Their Thoughts accusing them . : : ee fs) 
XXI. Now is the Judgment of this World . : Se: 
XXII. Whatsoever a Man Soweth : ‘ (4389 


XXII. They will not Come that They may have Life . 94 


SECTION 


XXIV. 
XXV. 
XXVI. 
XXVII. 
XXVIII. 
XXIX. 


XXX. 
XXXI. 
XXXII. 
XXXIII. 


XXXIV. 
XXXV. 


XXXVI. 


XXXVII. 


XXXVIII. 
XXXIX. 
AL: 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER VIII 
As MANY AS RECEIVED HIM 


The Sons demanding their Portion 
The Sons in a Far Country 

The Sons beginning to be in Want 
The Sons turning to the Father 
The Sons met by the Father . 
The Sons restored by the Father 


THE FAMILY OF GOD 


CHAPTER IX 
Our FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN 
God Man’s Dwelling-place in all Generations . 
Have we not All one Father? . 
All we are Brethren : 
The Commonwealth of Spirit . 


CHAPTER 
HALLOWED BE THY NAME 

Man’s Approach to God through Personality . 
Man’s Inspiration through Communion with 

God . i : : ; : 
The Bible a Reflection of God’s Communion 

with Men . ‘ 3 : 
The Creed a Report of Progress 


CHAPTER XI 
Tuy KINGDOM COME 


The Kingdom of the Father in its Manifestation 
The Kingdom of the Father in its Realization 
The Kingdom of Man at Hand 


xili 


PAGE 
Io! 


103 
104 
106 
IIO 
118 


138 


168 


173 
184 


Xiv 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER XII 


THY WILL BE DONE, AS IN HEAVEN, SO ON 


SECTION 


> UE 
2G TAGE 


XLII. Harmony with God’s Will Re Test of Social 


XLIV. 
2LV. 

pd ELE. 
AEV Ls 
ALVIII. 
LLAG 


EARTH 


God’s Will the Rule of Conduct 


Conformity to God’s Will the Measure of 


Progress 


Ideals 


CHAPTER. Ait 


GIVE US THIS DAY ouR DAILY BREAD 


The Cry for Bread . 


. Bread and to Spare 


Give ye them to Eat 

To every Man his Work. 

The Laborer Worthy of his Hire 

He that will not Work, neither shall he Eat 


CHAPTER: sky 


FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS AS WE HAVE FORGIVEN 


OUR DEBTORS 


- Our Common Debt of Knowledge . 
. The Spirit of Stewardship 

. The Stewardship of Property . 
Dil. 


The Stewardship of Personality 


PAGE 


1S i 
200 


209 


221 
223 
228 
249 
257 
269 


CONTENTS XV 


CHAPTER XV 


BRING US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER 


US FROM EVIL 
SECTION PAGE 


LIV. Society delivering its Members from Temptation . 304 
LV. Society delivering its Members from Evil . Se A 
LVI. Society delivered from Evil : P : aig 


GODSALE TIN ALL 


CHAPTER XVI 
GOD FILLING ALL IN ALL 


LVII. All Worlds One in the Being of God . : ane vie, 
LVIII. This Earth-Drama continued on Another Stage . 332 
LIX. This Mortal putting on Immortality . : | Sets 


CHAPTER XVII 
GOD WORKING ALL IN ALL 
LX. Social Organization perfected ina Future State . 345 
LXI. After the Power of an Endless Life. ; ACh, 
CHAPTER XVIII 
GOD BECOME ALL IN ALL 


LXII. Man’s End attained in God Sree : 1350 
LXIII. What God hath Prepared . : ; : . 360 


PETE eee ee ee (7 te ee YG GOR 


IN THE BEGINNING—GOD 


CHAPTER I 


PROGRESSIVE MANIFESTATION OF GOD AS UNIVERSAL 
BEING 


I. The Idea of God 


Gop is the basis of existence and of thought. The 
idea of God is itself creative. As God in reality gives 
form and substance to the actual universe, so God in 
thought gives form and character to man’s apprehen- 
sion of that universe. 

This constructive power of the idea of God works 
effectually in shaping all theologies and philosophies, 
whether avowedly theistic or not. Under this compre- 
hensive notion each system gathers into one definite 
conception the inner substance and generative force 
of existence in its totality. All metaphysics returns 
at last to him who is conceived as absolute being; all 
physical science grounds itself ultimately in him who 
is conceived as absolute force; all moral science 
derives its authority from him who is conceived as 
absolute good. Thus all knowledge of the objective 
world, as well as all activities of the human mind, are 
both organized by and included in the idea of God. 

Inevitably, the meaning of the term “God” has 
changed from age to age and has enlarged with the 
increase of man’s ability to grasp the objects of his 
thought in a single conception. The closing quarter 
of the nineteenth century has marked the entrance of 

3 


4 IN THE BEGINNING— GOD CHAP. 


two great principles, not wholly new, but new in their 
scope and application, into the interpretation of the 
idea of God. The first, and most revolutionary of 
these, relates to the being of God. It is the theory of 
the Divine Immanence. The profoundest philosophy 
of the day accords with Lessing’s conclusion. “I 
can no longer,” he said to Jacobi, “be satisfied with 
the orthodox conception of a God out of the world.” 
The thought of an absentee creator, dwelling at a 


. “distance inexpressible 
By numbers that have name,” 


is being replaced by the notion of an infinite energy 
resident within the universe of realities, and by its 
operations producing universal phenomena. In the 
world thus conceived there is nothing real but mind, 
no force but spirit, no independent existence but God. 


II. Recognition of God in the Universe 


Former views of God and the universe as two dis- 
tinct existences are outgrown. Physical and spiritual 
laws and forces so interact and pass into each other 
that we can no longer hold spirit and matter to be 
separate spheres. There is one infinite being, mani- 
fested in these diverse forms. Beneath them all 
subsists an all-embracing unity binding them to- 
gether in harmony. The activities continually dis- 
played in the sensible world have their foundation 
in modifications of that Infinite in which they are 
comprehended. 

For the first time human thought has attained an 
adequate theory of the universe. This generalization 
completes that subordination of the parts to the unity 


I RECOGNITION OF GOD IN THE UNIVERSE 5 


of the whole toward which human knowledge has 
from the first been tending. It transforms the cosmos 
into a real wzzverse, each part of which is related to 
every other part. Because constituted in this basal 
and general unity, the most complicated conditions 
and events supplement and act upon each other 
according to invariable law, and God is regarded not 
as apart from the universe but as comprising its vital 
essence. 

To this immanency of God all intelligibility in finite 
things is to be traced. Since we cannot, in actual 
consciousness, get back of absolute beginning to wit- 
ness the making of reality or to discover its creator, 
only. through this existent universe as eternally 
grounded in God shall we find him who is here 
externalized. All things exist as part of the process 
of his revealing, and every spirit of man, every 
flower, every atom of matter, is an open door into 
the presence of a God at hand and not afar off. At 
the same time, identifying the universe with the 
manifestation of Deity, a product thrown up as it 
were into visibility in the process of that manifesta- 
tion, gives no occasion to circumscribe the back- 
ground of infinite being by even this illimitable reve- 
lation. Though the totality of phenomena arises 
from God’s passing into activity, it does not exhaust 
him. The whole of God is never disclosed. That 
only is true monotheism, transcending every deistic 
and pantheistic limitation alike, which contemplates 
God as neither absorbed in the universe nor ex- 
cluded from it, but consciously comprehending the 
whole within himself as the unfolding of his own 
thoughts and energies. Modern science catches up 


6 IN THE BEGINNING — GOD CHAP. 


the ancient strain of Hildebert’s hymn and sings of 
God as :— 
“ Above all things, below all things ; 

Around all things, within all things; 

Within all, but not shut in; 

Around all, but not shut out; 

Above all, as the Ruler; 

Below all, as the Sustainer ; 


Around all, as all-embracing Protection ; 
Within all, as the Fulness of Life.” 


III. The Method of God’s Manifestation 


The second interpretative principle which is power- 
fully modifying our views of God refers to the method 
of his manifestation. The mother-thought of many 
of the ideas which mark off the modern from the 
ancient world is the changed understanding of the 
process by which the universe has reached its present 
stage. Until quite recent years the prevalent concep- 
tion of creation was that to which Milton has lent the 
transforming charm of the highest poetic genius. It 
is but lately that men have begun to inquire more par- 
ticularly what meaning lay hidden under that ancient 
symbol, God spake and it was done. As soon as an 
organic quality was found traceable through every 
department of the divine activity, it became clear that 
it was no longer a sufficient explanation of the way in 
which things have come into being to say of “th’ 
omnific Word” that 

. “in his hand 
He took the golden compasses prepared 
In God’s eternal store, to circumscribe 


This universe and all created things. 
One foot he centred, and the other turn’d 


I THE METHOD OF GOD’S MANIFESTATION ‘4 


Round through the vast profundity obscure, 
And said, Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds, 
This be thy just circumference, O world, 

Thus God the Heav’n created, thus the Earth, 
Matter unformed and void.” 


In the details of a universe thus outlined the same 
swift results would naturally follow the creative fiat. 
The heavenly bodies shine forth at the instant of 
command. On earth 


“Immediately the mountains huge appear 
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave 
Into the clouds.” 


The plants in their varied species arise in full flower, 
and the trees spring forth laden with fruit. The fer- 


tile earth 
- “teemed at a birth 
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, 
Limb’d and full grown.” 


A widely different idea now prevails. An inorganic 
mass of observations has been converted into a sys- 
tematic reading of the world-drama by finding that 
study of causes and agencies is not a dissection, but 
a vivisection. The processes of world-building which 
have produced the earth are seen to be still going 
on; the crust of the earth itself is continuously form- 
ing and re-forming in obedience to the same laws that 
fashioned it originally ; and with the discovery that 
the living matter on earth yields allegiance to the 
same constructive principle there was completed the 
mighty chain from nebulez to man. 

Following man’s own history through a longer per- 
spective, it is seen that the influences which have 


8 IN THE BEGINNING— GOD CHAP, 


shaped his various institutions are still active. As 
God did not turn creation off a finished product, like 
a vase from the wheel of a potter, neither has man 
deliberately constructed and held in finished form his 
social life, his laws, his government, his philosophy, 
or his religion. These things are not made, but grow. 
The organic structure of the universe is all-embracing. 
This is the idea of development which, because it binds 
into one consistent whole all that has been, that is, or 
shall be in human experience or relations, is deter- 
mining modern thought. 

It is evident that no mere change in phraseology 
can expand the earlier partial views of religious truth 
to the enlarged requirements of this idea. There 
must be a fearless change of view-point and a bold 
expansion of religious conceptions till they com- 
prehend the whole of human thinking, and replace 
the former notion of instantaneous creation with the 
theory of a continuous production which, never fin- 
ished, yet always corresponds in its progress with the 
divine purpose. The universe has not yet arrived at 
its goal, but it is upon the road, and advancing at a 
rate and in a direction satisfactory to him in whom at 
once the whole and all its parts live and move and 
have their being. 

This view finds a true continuity of the several 
parts in objective reality, instead of a merely subjec- 
tive unity in the divine mind. In this conception of 
God, as slowly evolving the particular forms of phe- 
nomenal existence from the plenitude of his own 
being, the whole process is seen to move forward in 
the divine drama of a universe unfolding from, yet 
toward, himself. There is thus obtained not only the 


I MAN’S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD A, 


harmony which reason requires in the elements of 
each section of the cosmic history but, what is even 
more important, the successive order of these periods 
is firmly knit into one indissoluble whole. 


IV. Man’s Knowledge of God beginning from 
Himself 


Out of these changed views of God’s being, and the 
process by which all things are produced, grows also 
a new method of apprehension, a different under- 
standing of the way in which God may be known. 
In that ancient epic of the soul, Job cries out for 
God: O that I knew where I might find him! Be- 
hold, I go forward but he is not here; and backward, 
but [ cannot discern him. The spiritual history of 
the race is the history of humanity’s search for an 
unrecognized God; its advance measures the degree 
to which it has found him. 

In the midst of a cosmos that constitutes one 
inter-related whole, man occupies a unique place. 
Self-conscious, self-reflecting, self-objectifying, man 
everywhere touches yet distinguishes himself from 
a phenomenal universe which gradually becomes re- 
vealed to him. Perception by finite minds of that 
world as a manifold existing in unity implies a self- 
determining mind through whose unifying action it 
thus exists as a connected whole. This unity as it 
exists for the eternal consciousness is reproduced for 
finite minds in the process of their conceiving it as 
thus related. In projecting its cosmic thoughts into 
the form of the outer world thus perceptible, the 
eternal spirit gives these thoughts a realization objec- 
tive to itself in the thoughts of these finite spirits. 


10 IN THE BEGINNING—GOD CHAP. 


These perceptions, independent on itself, given to 
the finite spirit in the self-objectifying of the infinite, 
constitute the reality of a finite spirit in a world con- 
sisting wholly of intellectual relations. Itself a repro- 
duction of the infinite mind, which begets it in the 
very course of realizing its universal purpose, it is 
impossible for the human mind not to seek to connect 
its present life with this external existence by some 
comprehensive view of the past and the future. A 
conviction of his participation in that being, whose 
objectified modes are the reality of the universe, 
comes to man in response to his mind’s need of some 
unifying conception, and presents itself as upon the 
whole the most satisfactory explanation of his being 
and doing that which he knows himself to be and to 
do.a 

In the beginning, therefore, the apprehension of 
God is subjective. The human mind can know 
nothing in immediate consciousness beyond its own 
being and states. But God, as the ground of our 
being and the eternal consciousness whose reality is 
continuously individualizing itself in our minds, is in 
truth the very “light of all our seeing,’ and in our 
consciousness of ourselves we are also conscious of 
God. Hence, while in the physical realm and in 
history we know only God’s manifestations, in know- 
ing him as manifested in ourselves we know his 
essence also, and we interpret him by our highest 
category of thought, and are persuaded that while 
he may be more, he certainly is not less personal 
and spiritual than ourselves. The idea of God thus 
becomes a necessary factor of our consciousness, 
because thus only do we attain to that unity of 


I MAN’S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 11 


conception, embracing both our knowledge of our- 
selves and of the world, which our reason by its 
very nature is compelled to seek. 

Man is able to comprehend this entire manifesta- 
tion because he finds all its converging lines uniting 
in himself. In his own consciousness which, by its 
comprehensive activity, recognizes and unites together 
these divergent relations, he sees himself included in 
them. He finds the different states and motions of 
his own spirit other and nobler than they in them- 
selves would be, because in them energizes and in a 
measure is realized that infinite spirit which therein 
finds partial expression. Identified through his body 
with both animate and inanimate forms in lower 
stages of existence, man is associated, to the remotest 
beginnings, with those mighty forces and processes 
that culminate in his physical constitution. He finds 
himself also no less closely allied intellectually with 
an infinitely grander set of potencies that environ his 
spirit. 

No better expression of this twofold relation can 
be given than it received in that classic description 
by Emanuel Kant, a century ago: “Two things fill 
my soul with an admiration and a veneration, ever 
new and ever increasing: the starry heavens above 
me, and the moral law within me. I am not com- 
pelled to look for these two grand sights through the 
covering of a mysterious obscurity, nor to ascertain 
them vaguely through an infinite distance. I con- 
template them immediately before me; they are 
bound to the very consciousness of my being. The 
one, the visible heaven, begins at the very point of 
the universe where I am, and widens around me in 


12 IN THE BEGINNING — GOD CHAP. 


circles of worlds, in systems of systems, up to the 
infinitude of spaces and of times in which these worlds 
are situated. The other, the moral law, equally starts 
from my invisible self ; it places me in the midst of 
the intellectual universe, that other infinitude with 
which my personality stands in a necessary relation.” 

The meaning of his connection with this universal 
order has been to man the pivotal point about which 
all forms of revelation have turned. His questionings 
on these points invest with intense personal concern 
the whole cycle of existence. In the past lie its 
hidden sources; the present is heavy with its re- 
sponsibilities ; the future conceals its anticipated 
compensations. Revelation were useless unless man, 


“ Self-knowing, and from thence 
Magnanimous to correspond with heaven,” 


were able to recognize its adaptation to the fulfilment 
of his nature. So far as congruous with it, the finite 
is of necessity capable of the infinite. Through this 
vital relation of the individual and the universe the 
possibilities of revelation are immeasurable, and the 
association of man as personal spirit with the under- 
lying divine reason becomes continuously more con- 
scious and intimate. 

Thus man’s apprehension returns upon a backward 
path from the newest to the old. Before man was, 
the cosmos was; before the cosmos, that from which 
the cosmos springs. The order of existence is God, 
world, man; the order of human discovery is self, 
world, God. This one inestimable service is rendered 
the cause of true religion by that scientific hypothesis 
which we have been following. It has given us just 


I MAN’S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 13 


that vital and reasoned concept of God of which we 
stood in need, and in its light God and his revelation 
of himself cease to be antiques. God spake to our 
fathers yesterday ; he speaks to us to-day. He is not 
a fact of history, which may be stated and catalogued 
once for all, but a living person with whom every man 
stands in personal relation. Wherefore, a realization 
of God is the first necessity of each generation in 
order to determine what man himself is, and is to*do 
and to be. Professor Tyndall on the summit of the 
Matterhorn, asking whether his thought as it ran back 
to the star-dust thus returned to its primeval home, 
is a universal type of mankind in his recognition of 
personal responsibility in these mysterious problems 
of being ; for all science and philosophy and theology 
are but the endeavor of the human mind, finding itself 
in a world already existing, to follow back the process 
of becoming, until it can correlate the outer world of 
fact with the inner world of experience. 


CHAPTER “fi 


PROGRESSIVE MANIFESTATION OF GOD AS UNIVERSAL 
SPIRIT 


V. Universal Being Spiritual 


THE particular service rendered the requirements 
of clear thought by this idea of an immanent God is 
that it presents the cosmos to our apprehension as the 
direct forthputting in continuous outflow of the divine 
energy. Thus the task at which Greek philosophy 
labored so long, and not without partial success, the 
spiritualization of the universe, has been at last ac- 
complished. But the Christian philosophy is much 
profounder than the Greek. The earlier thought 
which set itself to refute the notion of the universe, 
as an emanation or necessary product of the divine 
essence, opposed that view with the theory that the 
universe resulted from a free act of will realizing 
itself in time as a fact — factwm— something done, 
once for all. The newer thinking, both Christian and 
non-Christian, has advanced to a stronger position. 
Acceptance of the theory that the things that are 
have come to be by gradual development has been 
followed by a general conviction that the only suffi- 
cient explanation of this process is, that nature is the 
manifestation of God in the course of attaining his 
ends, or, as Augustine declares, The order of nature 
is the will of God — Dei voluntas est rerum natura. 

14 


CHAP. II UNIVERSAL BEING SPIRITUAL 15 


In this phenomenal universe, therefore, the great 
hidden Life becomes visible in ¢he things that do 
appear. The universe is God visualized. Creation 
is a vital and continuous process. The universe is 
the utterance of God himself in the process of his 
self-revelation. It is the product, as well as the 
process, of the manifestation of God. In its entirety 
it is the immediate and continuous expression of 
himself. He is revealed in its unfolding, and not 
until the realization of his purpose is complete will he 
be completely revealed. 

That conception of God which sees in him the 
totality of causation, and in the visible frame of 
things the result of his ascending manifestation, 
gives the firmest possible basis for teleology. God’s 
differentiating himself by self-begotten impulse into a 
myriad-fold reality is the highest possible manifesta- 
tion of creative energy and the sublimest conceivable 
act of intelligence. The nature and succession of 
the different orders give convincing proof that their 
progressing hosts have been so marshalled in wisdom, 
that the highest comes to its supremacy by right of 
divine appointment. Development is the result of 
no bare formulative force, but of prescribed changes 
directed to a definite end. It is the process by which 
the divine ideas continually struggle to new birth in ° 
ever higher forms, in. accordance with laws which 
express the intent of the primal reason. Men never 
doubt that the physical world will return an intelligi- 
ble answer to any intelligent question. On this con- 
viction rests the long array of special sciences and 
investigations into natural phenomena. The intention 
of the immanent God is natural law. 


16 IN THE BEGINNING—GOD CHAP. 


Established thus in the eternal spirit as its produc- 
tive ground, the universe exists only as modes of the 
divine activity. Its author abides within it as its 
animating and directing spirit. In its entirety it is 
flexible to his will, and through this indwelling there 
is possible the steady outworking of his purpose; at 
each successive stage it expresses his meaning, all 
discords and seeming contradictions being taken up 
into his perfect plan in such a way as still to con- 
tribute each its portion to the manifestation of the 
One in his fulness. 

By this conception the intellect is emancipated 
from that dualism which has held it so long in bond- 
age to the idea of a Creator apart from a creature 
largely unresponsive, if not antagonistic, to himself. 
Besides this negative result, it has won also the rich 
inheritance of belief in a God, who is not a mechani- 
cian controlling his creation from afar, but is himself 
immanent in that creation, which is no more than the 
living “ garment thou seest him by.” 

Acceptance of this idea, that one universal being 
constitutes the form and substance of the cosmic 
whole, leads inevitably on to greater consequences. 
It is impossible to consider ourselves, together with 
all beneath us, as brought into being in the progres- 
sive manifestation of the Unconditioned, and still 
regard it as also the Unconscious. Tracing back the 
various branchings of this manifold reality, all those 
individual forms are found to be but phenomena, 
which have their ultimate source in that original 
entity whose changes and movements give rise to 
these fleeing shapes through which it becomes cogni- 
zable by finite minds. These changes and movements, 


II INCREASING MANIFESTATION OF SPIRIT 17 


since they produce man, cannot be thought to be 
necessitated, but self-determined and conscious. Self- 
motivation and conscious unity as the basis of chang- 
ing states are functions of spirit only. The reflective 
mind, however, is not content with this vague gen- 
eralization. It is impelled to lift this abstract con- 
clusion into specification of spiritual qualities, using 
itself as the measuring rod by which to reduce these 
infinite dimensions to terms within human compre- 
hension. From the vantage ground of his own per- 
sonality, man is able to trace the process of God’s 
self-revelation in the visible universe. 


VI. Increasing Manifestation of Spirit 


No more impressive exhibit can be made than that 
chronological arrangement which shows the advance 
in a single art, or the evolution of a particular species 
from crude beginnings to perfection. Imagination 
can scarcely picture the awe-inspiring panorama that 
should display the gradual emergence and slow pro- 
cession of successive life-forms before the eyes of 
one who could watch them from the beginning. All 
these have reached their various stages of being 
through the progressive development of that imma- 
nent causative reality which we call God. Science 
finds its province in tracing the progress of this world- 
drama, as it has unfolded in the life-history of the 
world. 

Through the slow preparation of the physical frame 
of earth for bringing forth the lowest forms of life, 
through the amcebe and mollusks, through fishes, 
reptiles, mammals, there is marked ascent and a fuller 
manifestation of spirit. In the protozoa the higher 

C 


18 IN THE BEGINNING— GOD CHAP. 


attributes of God have begun, using Boehme’s apt 
expression, ‘to grow structural.’”’ He continues to 
unfold himself in ever higher forms, in an ever as- 
cending scale, disclosing consciousness in nature, 
intelligence in animal life, reason and moral qualities 
in humanity, till ultimately he is fully disclosed in 
manhood perfected. 

With the advent of man in this ascending scale, 
God’s true self-expression first comes forth from the 
silence of inarticulate phenomena, and in the moral 
life of humanity spirit speaks with spirit. In the 
production of this spirit, real creation takes place 
for the first time in the process of God’s realizing 
himself in the world. In the human spirit God has 
so fully objectified his own being that man no longer 
exists solely as a mode of the divine mind, but has 
passed beyond the phenomenal and become himself 
a substance, a thinking being, and thus reached an 
actual, though relative, independence. 

Man’s spirit is the eternal consciousness under 
temporal and organic limitations, and by gradual 
increase in the content of its own consciousness it 
continuously approximates to the parent spirit. This 
oneness with God is the ground of all likeness to him 
which man is realizing in experience. Because of 
this, God can speak to man and man can answer. 
When God calls to high spiritual attainment, man 
can respond to the call by attaining. The human 
qualities which God reveals in himself, and the god- 
like qualities which he develops in man, are alike 
explicable not only, but natural if man’s spirit re- 
sults from a gradual manifestation of God as univer- 
sal spirit. 


I THE SPIRIT MANIFESTED AS ONE 19 


VII. The Spirit manifested as One 


The conception of the universe as resulting from 
the revelation of God, who manifests himself more 
and more as spirit, must necessarily modify many 
important theological tenets. Among these is that 
metaphysical abstraction which finds an _ eternal 
necessity for three equal persons within one God- 
head. 

Recognition of a threefold root of reality is deeply 
ingrained in human thought. That triplicity which 
inheres in the most abstract unity becomes more 
clearly manifest in larger wholes. So fundamental 
have the clearest thinkers ever found this distinction, 
that to them the universe has seemed but the explica- 
tion of a great rule of three. They have found the 
primal reason manifested always according to three 
inseparable laws: The Absolute is conceived as unre- 
lated; the unrelated, moved by internal impulse, mani- 
fests itself as the relative ; a correlation between the 
absolute and the related furnishes the necessary con- 
dition of their being realized through each other. 
This general truth runs as a regulative principle 
through the universe as actualized. God comes 
nearer and nearer to us through increasing revela- 
tion. The lines of his approach are fixed by his 
final purpose, —a purpose conceived with such defi- 
niteness that the ever-growing reality of the uni- 
verse springs up along his pathway to that goal; the 
whole made orderly and sublime in its development 
by subjection to an unvarying reign of law. 

This is a glorious eniargement of the old idea of 
the Trinity. That impulse which forbade the One to 


20 IN THE BEGINNING— GOD CHAP, 


abide alone, rightly interpreted, is seen to be the im- 
pulse of Living Love to share the felicity of his own 
nature with unnumbered multitudes who shall be in- 
dividualized from his own substance that these may 
be his children evermore. Apprehending God in 
this form supplies just that want of the soul to which 
the long-standing doctrine of the trinity bears such 
eloquent witness, a want which it could supply, how- 
ever, only at the expense of clearly defined ideas. 

It was, however, a need deep as the springs of 
human nature which it was sought to satisfy in this 
way. As it was impossible not to feel that the revela- 
tions of any given moment must be inseparably con- 
nected, through both the past and the future, with 
the whole economy of the universe, so on the other 
hand there could be nothing independent of that reve- 
lation. The historical Christ was accordingly con- 
ceived as necessarily one in eternity with God; and 
that regulative providence by which evidence of a 
spiritual presence became increasingly clear was 
hypostasized as a power working in man for his 
redemption, and existing from the beginning as a 
necessary factor of the divine being. In this dog- 
matic form, however, most believers have regarded 
this doctrine as little better than an incomprehensi- 
ble enigma, which to confess not to be able to under- 
stand betokens a meritorious humility. 

This confusion of mind springs from the attempt 
to hold as an article of faith a teaching absolutely at 
variance with human reason. The history of thought 
has scarcely a less worthy page than that on which is 
written the shifts and evasions and subterfuges by 
which men have endeavored to escape the plain con- 


II THE SPIRIT MANIFESTED AS ONE 21 


sequences of trying to give to words in theology a 
meaning the reverse of that which they bore in ordi- 
nary life. It is a great relief to faith to have a view 
of God which shall suggest, not the consenting activ- 
ity of three Gods, but the threefold relationship of 
one God who loves us as a Father, who manifests 
himself among us as a Brother, whose Spirit bears 
witness with our spirits that we are the sons of God, 
—a trinity consisting not of three personalities, in the 
common acceptation of that word, but in the personal © 
revelation of one God in a threefold unfolding. 

The triumph of monotheism is at last complete. 
The diverse deities of the unscientific ages have 
gradually been forced to abdicate. Last to yield has 
been the notion of the gods of good and evil contend- 
ing with doubtful issue for the mastery. The modern 
theory of the universe, as originating in the self- 
revelation of God, necessarily removes the premises 
from which such interpretations spring. Just as we 
have found the idea of God as universal being to 
exclude the earlier conception of dualism in mind and 
matter, so the idea of God as universal spirit excludes 
the earlier conception of the dualism of God and evil 
spirits. : 

The malignant form of an arch-spirit of evil, who 
has cast his baleful shadow over the human mind from 
the beginning, and who, until quite recently, has been 
an awful terror, freezing the pulses and paralyzing the 
will of mankind, is forced to yield his sceptre and 
betake himself to the congenial regions of “chaos 
and old night.” The spirit of God, it is at last seen, 
has not to strive with a spirit of evil so universal, so 
subtle, so powerful, as always to hinder and often 


22 IN THE BEGINNING— GOD CHAP. II 


to thwart the divine effort for human welfare ; but 
instead has but the slowness of moral growth in 
humanity, and the wilfulness of souls ignorant of their 
true good with which to contend. The new concep- 
tion of God as himself the universe is a proclamation 
of emancipation from the powers of Satan; it is a 
declaration that God is always man’s friend, it is also 
a notice that for his own sinfulness man is himself 
responsible. The Devil is no more. 


CHAPTER GLE 


PROGRESSIVE MANIFESTATION OF GOD AS UNIVERSAL 
WILL 


VIII. The Being of God the Law of His Manifestation 


THE eternal spirit, whose being and manifestation 
constitute universal substance and form, realizes itself 
in accordance with the self-ordered laws of its own 
being. In our search backward for what has been, 
we may expect to find no blind impulse confusing 
the record with the aimlessness of misrule, but a 
clear aim and steady pressing forward along well- 
defined lines of intention. Any satisfactory theory 
of the universe must give account in an intelligible 
way of the relation which the archetypal thought 
sustains to its efficient realization. Religious belief 
agrees with philosophical idealism, that the sum total 
of things exist and are such as they are by the will 
of God, and to this will they owe their significance 
and position in the universal plan. 

To say, however, that reality itself is the produc- 
tion of the divine will is not to accept the popular 
notion that the existent has been spoken into being 
by one creative word of God. It is not a specific act 
of realization to which our conclusions have brought 
us, but rather a continuous process in which his pri- 
mal will unfolds into individual forms and objecti- 
fies itself in a consistent whole. Will is not simply 

23 


24 IN THE BEGINNING—GOD CHAP. 


the executive faculty of mind, nor merely the abstract 
power of self-initiated choice. The act of willing is 
an expression of the essential nature of the one who 
wills. The will itself is the living ground of all 
spiritual faculties, and their activity is conditioned 
solely by the nature of the being to whom they per- 
tain. 

The person willing puts himself into what is willed, 
whether it be that which exists in eternal reality, 
or awaits for its realization its proper place in an 
unfolding sequence. The wide universe of reality 
has in its origin a cause sufficient to give rise and 
value to all its subordinate realities, inasmuch as it 
is no mere mechanical product, but the continuous 
expression of the inexhaustible will of God. His 
being is the inner substance of all external manifesta- 
tion, and while this manifestation is not the measure 
of the boundless life behind it, yet the infinitude of 
that life is the assurance of the enduring nature 
of this presentation of himself. What the world is, 
it is because God is what he is. It embodies the 
actual character of the free, personal, eternal spirit, 
whose intrinsic nature here shows forth its true 
quality and manifests itself in strict accord with laws 
which the absolute being itself furnishes. 

It is a fruitful truth that God, in carrying for- 
ward this realization of himself, works along lines of 
self-limitation, grounded indeed in his own essential 
character, but determined in their application by the 
ultimate object of such personal unfolding. The 
being of God is the Constitution of the universe. 
All his volitions are in harmony with that. He has 
put into these all law that is needed for government. 


III THE LAW OF HIS MANIFESTATION 25 


He has put himself into the regulative principles of 
his administration. That unity and order of nature, 
which science so delights to discover and declare, is 
but ‘thinking God’s thoughts after him,” as Kepler 
said, and tracing beneath superficial fluctuations the 
well-defined lines of purpose within which the whole 
moves. 

These compose that framework of laws which 
appear as there is occasion and bridge the gulf 
between the purposive intent and the accomplished 
result. The entire sum and relationships of the 
universe are none other than the condition under 
which the universal will is realizing itself. Each 
event finds its reason and character in its relation to 
this ultimate source ; for in these events is manifested 
the inner life of the spirit which produces the results 
visible in the world’s history. Only in obedience to 
a carefully wrought plan has the adjustment and re- 
adjustment of its various elements moved steadily 
forward toward its appointed end, until the very 
regularity of the process has led some to think of 
the unity of nature as of something apart from mind, 
and to hail the Reign of Law as though by some 
aimless, unintelligent principle had this harmony and 
consent been brought about. 

Such imperfect apprehension is perhaps to be 
expected as a reaction from conceptions of the divine 
method which saw him actually putting forth a crea- 
tive hand to shape the crude materials of chaos into 
a cosmos of symmetry and beauty. Even that 
subtler vision, which beholds universal nature rearing 
its stately forms in obedience to the breath of the 
Almighty who calls them into being with an omnipo- 


26 IN THE BEGINNING—GOD CHAP. 


tent word, leads often to the same error. The under- 
standing that what we have here is not creation out 
of nothing, nor even the shaping of material previ- 
ously existing separate from God, but an actual 
emerging of the hidden Deity into visibility, makes 
it impossible to doubt that not without clearly defined 
purpose and a consideration of means to ends has 
this universe become what it is. 

In this view the elementary conception of a large 
portion of the Christian Church, that all things are 
and occur in obedience to the decree of God, is enor- 
mously expanded and ennobled at the same time that 
it is established upon impregnable foundations of 
scientific induction. The doctrine of divine decrees 
is here removed from its arbitrary position and 
from its one-sided character as an explanation of the 
ground of God’s workings into the broader, and at 
the same time tenderer, notion of the means by which 
the being of God himself becomes embodied in the 
products of his gracious intention. It is simply the 
recognition that in an intelligent order nothing can 
come to pass without the divine foreknowledge and 
intent. The limitation of that application to the 
moral relations of man to God has given a harshness 
to one branch to modern theology which this view 
softens even while it extends. 


IX. Uniformity of God’s Will a Pledge and a Forecast 


This widespread and fundamental doctrine of the 
Divine Sovereignty, harsh and pulseless as it has too 
often been made to appear, becomes to a degree sur- 
passing all that its most ardent adherent of earlier 
days ever dreamed, a doctrine of hope and a vision 


III GOD’S WILL A PLEDGE AND A FORECAST 27 


of delight ; for is not this the promise and founda- 
tion of all progress, the sure ground of prophecy that 
the present process shall culminate in a glory and 
perfection which has yet had but dim foreshadowing ? 
We have had this thought as a metaphysical neces- 
sity of the world-order; we have had it as the theo- 
logical necessity of the moral order of the world. In 
these departments it has been helpful and full of 
strength. But now we have it in the full and broader 
meaning which comprehends the theological and 
metaphysical, and is at the same time the basis of 
that universal correlation of forces which in its grad- 
ual disclosure is making manifest the telic aim of the 
entire creative unfolding, the subordination of all 
things to the divine will and purpose. 

Such is our confidence in the unbroken continuity 
of those laws which control the world-process that 
though we see them emerge from the wide and un- 
known region of obscurity which shrouds the earliest 
recollections of the races, as well as the beginnings of 
each individual life, yet are we persuaded that before 
they came into our view they were the same as we 
find them to be wherever we can trace them. They 
have moulded life in those plastic periods and made it 
what it now is; their changeless continuance as the 
expression of the ultimate will gives confidence that 
they mould the present life for a better future. 

Thus the uniformity of nature is eloquent of the 
unshaken purpose and continuous favor of God far 
more than would be any interference with its ap- 
pointed order in man’s behalf. Only because we are 
persuaded of a settled order are we courageous to 
undertake or bold to trust. If the established course 


28 IN THE BEGINNING— GOD CHAP. 


is interrupted for one it may be for all, and chaos 
were soon come again. Man has no better friend 
than the invariability of God. Without this no 
science would be possible, nor the moral character 
that springs from the necessity of adapting oneself 
to fixed conditions. Only thus can a sense of secu- 
rity come, when man realizes that he 1s not the play- 
thing of blind chance, but the subject of an empire 
whose laws change not. 

The nobler our conception of God, the less desire 
have we for the capricious interruption of his pre- 
determined order for our sakes, assured as we are 
that the existing order has been appointed as the 
means for securing our highest good. We shall learn 
to recognize his mighty power in the orderly march 
of events, moral as well as physical, toward a worthy 
good, rather than in the petty manifestations of his 
authority over nature by breaking its regular flow. 
The constancy of the divine laws, so far as they lie 
within human ken, furnishes our only means of fore- 
casting the future. From the character of the will 
and the direction of its energy revealed in what has 
been, we can predict with some assurance what is the 
final goal. 

That obscurity which, in spite of increasing insight 
into the modes of God’s manifestation, still rests to 
a degree over all that is to come, results entirely from 
the partial nature of our knowledge. An insight 
able to pierce beneath the bewildering variety of 
phenomena to the inner law upon which their mutual 
relations and significance depend would disclose the 
end to which it is directed; for these universal facts 
become such only as expressing an essential phase 


II GOD’S WILL A PLEDGE AND A FORECAST 29 


of that universal activity which imparts meaning 
and place to them from its own inherent consist- 
ency. 

As a rational being, man, bridging with hypothesis 
the chasms in knowledge, must endeavor to trace for 
his own satisfaction the sequence of events, and 
especially the fundamental reason of the world, in 
order to discover his own nature and destiny. The 
rising of the questions Whence are we? and Whither 
are we bound ? marks the horizon between the night 
of brute contentment and the dawning day of man’s 
inquiring spirit. To fill this opening inner life with 
the rich contents of an ever-expanding experience is 
the office of all mental activity. These questions 
are assigned to speculative thought for answer, and, 
in the person of its chief founder, modern philosophy 
declares it to be the business of that science to 
answer three questions: What may I know? What 
ought I to do? For what may I hope? Men feel 
that this threefold enigma of nature, duty, and des- 
tiny is capable of solution only because they recog- 
nize in the world not the working of simple formative 
force, but a determinative thought indissolubly as- 
sociated with an ethical end. To the eternal worth 
of this end they look for the explanation and justi- 
fication of that universal will which expresses itself 
in this plexus of universal laws. 

Weighty corroboration for this thought lies in the 
unanimity with which the noblest souls have been 
convinced of its truth by the witness of their own 
hearts. Everywhere the call of duty draws its 
deepest sanction from the persuasion that its real 
obligation lies in its fitness to be the act, not merely 


30 IN THE BEGINNING— GOD CHAP. 


of such persons as we are, but of such as we are to 
be when this apprehended end is accomplished in us. 
Still more fully is such conception of God’s arche- 
typal relation justified by the steady growth, partic- 
ularly in recent years, of the ethical idea of God, 
showing the ascending tendency of the world toward 
a spiritual goal—an ascent toward realization of the 
ideal which, if continued, will necessarily bring us to 
God in whom that ideal is realized. 


X. Love determining the Unfolding of God’s Will 


A conception of the universe as an unfolding, 
which finds its law in the being of God, gives a 
scientific justification to the growing thought that 
love is the impulse which determines the activities of 
God manward. This view is destined to prevail 
more and more as it is increasingly seen that it is an 
interpretation broad enough to include all those attri- 
butes, —sovereignty, holiness, justice, truth, or power, 
upon which earlier systems of theology have rested. 
While these are either passive or partial qualities, 
love is the comprehensive term in which is subsumed 
all those elements which together constitute the idea 
of the perfect being —the thought underlying the 
Apostle’s definition, God zs Jove. 

On the conviction that love, in this broad and in- 
clusive sense, underlies the universe as its foundation 
religion rests. While will is character in repose, love 
furnishes the dynamic element by which that poten- 
tial energy is transformed into beneficent action. 
All philosophy which rests in any way upon theistic 
grounds agrees «with theology that only by the good 
pleasure of him who was before all things does any- 


ut DETERMINING THE UNFOLDING OF GOD’S WILL 31 


thing exist. That which thus began to be at the 
impulse of his will partakes the character of him 
from whom it sprung. All that is, therefore, is 
directly a gift of God to sentient beings conscious of 
themselves. In this gift he has put himself forth in 
kind desire to share his own felicity with those spirits 
who should rise into existence through his personal 
unfolding as universal spirit. 

That love which furnishes the initiative of God’s 
creative work maintains, also, the continuance of 
creative activity through the countless ages till his 
perfect will be fully accomplished. It persists 
through the slow waiting of preliminary stages. 

It sustains the divine purpose under the delay of 
human imperfection and antagonism. It manifests 
itself in a myriad forms of natural grace and beauty. 
It culminates in that perfected race in which the 
divine perfection shall be reflected. The fountain 
of this love is eternal; its creative energy is with- 
out slackening or stay, because it is the unfolding 
of the fathomless self of him whose holy will gra- 
ciously manifests itself forever as living love. 

From the conclusion, that in the production of hu- 
manity God aims to bring that race into moral one- 
ness with himself, itis clear that his counsel of mercy 
concerning man is old as eternity. John’s grand 
conception of an eternal ministry of sacrifice, in the 
Hebrew vernacular a Lamb slain from the founda- 
tion of the world, puts to shame the time-serving and 
ungracious features often forced upon later state- 
ments of that relationship. There is help in this 
‘thought for one who attempts a systematic analysis of 
the problem of human life. It explains the intimacy 


32 IN THE BEGINNING— GOD CHAP. 


subsisting between God and humanity, despite their 
present diversity of character. 

What is obscure to a short view is often clear to a 
longer view, and looking back to the creative purpose 
of God we find that mankind exists in order that by 
the discipline of moral conflict its members shall 
achieve a moral freedom and a grounding in right- 
eousness, not indeed apart from God but in codpera- 
tion with him, which shall ultimately transform 
humanity into a godly people, worthy of that divine 
patience and long-suffering which slowly wrought 
them into his likeness. Earthly life is opportunity, 
-the open gate of heaven to every human soul. Be- 
cause conformity to himself was the terminus which 
God purposed for the race, it was consistent with both 
the divine holiness and the divine mercy to grant a 
separate personality to man, even though the path to 
its realization necessarily led through the dismal and 
dangerous wilderness of sin. Hence the anomaly of 
unholiness in persons whose being is a specialization 
of the holy being of God. 

This is the root of philosophy’s profoundest diffi- 
culty. It sharpens the point of the question which 
Carneades pressed home upon the ancient Stoics in 
asking how evil was to be found in a world originat- 
ing from the Good, and how irrational action should 
be the fruit of creative Reason. These problems have 
been insoluble from any view-point other than that 
which recognizes character as the end and moral dis- 
cipline the means of its attainment. Character has 
no existence apart from conscious will. A spirit ca- 
pable of holiness is of necessity capable of sin; in 
losing the power to sin it would lose the possibility of 


wi DETERMINING THE UNFOLDING OF GOD’S WILL 33 


holiness. The design to develop a creature into the 
round completeness of personality must anticipate 
error in that finite will, with accompanying evil in the 
universe and sin in the individual soul. 

A holy person must be sinless, not because unable 
to sin, but because unwilling. Moral character cannot 
be produced by external agency; it can be wrought 
only by the consenting effort of the soul itself. God 
endows man not, primarily, with his own image, but 
with the possibility of attaining unto it. The moral 
discipline by which self-conflict succeeds in subordi- 
nating all volition to the steady mastery of a will de- 
termined toward rectitude is a process both painful 
and slow. Self-indulgence, in yielding to the baser 
impulses, does such violence to one’s true nature as 
to involve suffering as its necessary correlative. Diffi- 
cult and baffling as these conditions are, they lose 
something of their air of impenetrable mystery when 
considered in their ultimate source. They are insepa- 
rable from the process of bringing free persons by the 
discipline of earthly life into conscious and willing 
conformity with the end of their being. 


“Take comfort ! Earth is full of sin, 
But also full of God.” 


By means of these experiences he is working out in 
man the full significance of life. Sin and suffering 
spring from the inevitableness of moral conflict in the 
making of moral character. 

Through the codperation of God in many gracious 
activities, his original relationship to humanity in 
thought is becoming realized in man’s own constitu- 


tion. By virtue of this premundane preparation, man 
D 


34 IN THE BEGINNING — GOD CHAP. III 


enters life, not naked and barren, but heir of a vast 
provision of aim and intention which receives him 
as the atmosphere receives the fledgling eagle. He 
comes unto hisown. He enters upon his career under 
conditions that have anticipated his needs and fore- 
seen both his weakness and his strength, and all with 
direct reference to the carrying out of the will of God 
for his perfection. Instead of the broken lights and 
distorted images which made up the picture when we 
looked no farther back than to an historic creation, we 
have here the sublime panorama of the orderly march 
of events from everlasting to everlasting, and the earth- 
life of man is seen to be only an incident in a great 
drama which embraces two eternities. 


a 


mite SONS OR] GOD 


x 


y 


CHAPTER IV 
MANIFESTATION OF THE SONS OF GOD 


XI. Man’s Advent in Accord with Universal Law 


THERE is a safeguard against superstition in the 
principle that, in accounting for a result, no greater 
agency is to be supposed than is necessary to accom- 
plish the matter in hand. Kepler’s explanation of 
planetary motions by the hypothesis of a guiding 
angel for each orb became superstition as soon as 
Newton’s discoveries brought those motions under 
the general law of gravitation. This law of parsi- 
mony, as it is called in science, is opposed to that 
temper which seeks to except man from the operation 
of those laws which control all below him. How 
easily may a prejudice turn the fine edge of the 
noblest thought ! 

Once here, man need not concern himself over- 
much as to the route by which he arrived, — that 
might be mediate or immediate, direct or indirect, a 
specific act or a long-continued process with equal 
indifference,-— but he is profoundly interested in 
knowing his life’s history accurately. Did he labo- 
riously climb to his present supremacy up a long 
ladder of lower animal forms? Is he, or is he not, 
the crowning consummation of an evolution covering 
myriads of ages? No specific theory concerning the 
structure of the world and the record of man’s earthly 

37 


38 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP, 


beginning, no chasms in the orderly progress of nat- 
ure, are essential to his spiritual life so long as all 
the facts find intelligent explanation in the unity of 
nature, for nature’s unity is God’s singleness of pur- 
pose. 

The relation of God to the universe is naturally 
closest in man. Below and before him everything 
might supposedly have responded to a word of crea- 
tive might, such as the fiat theory supposes, and 
sprung into existence at the call. As a spiritual 
being, however, man could not be thus produced by 
power, but only by communication of the divine 
essence. This ancient saying is also the newest 
science, God breathed into man the breath of life, and 
man became a living soul. In doing this, however, 
there was no exception to the law. of divine pro- 
cedure. first the blade, then the ear, then the full 
corn tn the ear. Man was not spoken into being full- 
grown and mature. A finite personality requires time 
and moral discipline for its unfolding. Humanity as 
a whole evolves from simple germs, as the perfect 
tree from the tiny seed. Man’s beginning was not 
at the same time a finishing It was the divine initi- 
ation of the process of soul-building which is carried 
forward continuously by the codperation of God. 

Much hesitancy to recognize the value to theology 
of deductions of natural history on this point is due 
to a sort of pride of ancestry which considers to be 
moulded from clay directly by an almighty hand, a 
nobler origin than to come forth as the ripe consum- 
mation of an indefinite process of divine energizing. 
Though proud to own himself brother of the sun, and 
first cousin to the stars, man is rather disposed to 


IV THE GRADUAL ASCENT TOWARD MAN 39 


deny his poorer earth relations. Yet it is through 
them that he is himself an inseparable part of the 
universe. On his physical side he is closely bound 
to all the lower orders of animal life. The upper 
crust of the earth, the water, and the air are them- 
selves formed principally of three gases which, to- 
gether with a few soluble salts, compose all vegetable 
and animal bodies. This in itself has a profound 
bearing upon the unity between man and the lower 
orders. Man draws the materials of his growth from 
the same source as the plant or the beast ; he assimi- 
lates these materials into his own structure by analo- 
gous chemical processes; this likeness in material 
constituents subjects his bodily frame to the same 
limitations of strength and durability, and expose it 
to the same liability to decay; the use of like mate- 
rials compels corresponding likeness in the mechanics 
of bodily form and arrangement. It is therefore im- 
possible that man should get far away in constituent 
elements, in essential bodily functions, or in physical 
form from the more rudimentary life of the world. 


XII. The Gradual Ascent toward Man 


The wide differences between man and man prove 
that neither identity of constituent elements nor like- 
ness of physical structure necessitates sameness in 
attainment. In fact, it is only from the vantage-ground 
of a study of man as the apex of the pyramid of life 
that this law, which we think we discern in the life- 
history of the globe, is interpreted and justified. From 
this point the whole pathway can be seen and found 
to hold its consistent way amid all the entanglements 
and difficulties through which it passes. Only to 


40 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP, 


those who look forward from the crude beginning, 
and seek to make the primal germ reveal all its future 
achievements, does there appear confusion and indi- 
rectness of effort. After the beginnings of individu- 
ality in the crystal, the commencement of life in 
capillary attraction, the dawnings of sensibility in the 
plant, and the infinite variety, beauty, and gradations 
of ever-increasing complexity and value in the animal 
kingdom, — 
“ There wanted yet the master-work, the end 
Of all yet done.” 

In the words of Louis Agassiz, ‘Man is the end 
toward which all the animal creation has tended from 
the first appearance of the paleozoic fishes.” In the 
human body the physical order finds its crown. 
Moreover, it is an epitome of the record from earliest 
times. The late Henry Drummond suggestively 
says: ‘“ Hitherto we have been taught to look in the 
fossiliferous formations of Geology for the buried lives 
of the earth’s past. But Embryology has startled the 
world by declaring that the ancient life of the earth 
isnotdead. It is risen. It exists to-day in the em- 
bryos of still living things, and some of the most 
archaic types find again a resurrection and a life in 
the frame of man himself.” Any hypothesis of the 
development of man has yet many unsettled problems, 
and there are numerous lacunz in the documents 
from which his story must be read. Acceptance of 
the belief that there has been a gradual ascent in all 
departments, from the lowest to present forms, does 
not imply that it is either possible or necessary to 
trace all the steps of the journey. 

A much more important office than merely to com- 


Ni le ie 


IV THE GRADUAL ASCENT TOWARD MAN 4) 


plete, by his bodily perfection, the physical ascent of 
nature is that consciously performed by man himself 
in gathering up and conserving the slow gains of 
ages of selective advance toward higher qualities. 
Very low down in the uniform mass of living matter 
begin to appear lines of cleavage which broaden into 
widely distributed functions in a higher stage. 
Scarcely distinguishable in their beginnings, the sen- 
sations of hunger and love mark the divergence of 
the great branches of self-seeking and self-sacrificing 
life. The primitive separation of early forms into 
male and female originates those wide differences in 
constitution, both physical and mental, which dis- 
tribute all higher life into complementary halves. 
Lengthening periods of association and care of off- 
spring among animal pairs anticipate the human 
family and parental affection. 

That never-ceasing struggle between the general 
good and the personal advantage of the individual, 
which has so largely characterized history hitherto, 
is the all-prevailing condition in these prehistoric 
periods. Still there is a noticeable widening and 
strengthening of the better and nobler qualities as 
the stages of life grow higher. Elementary morality 
may be traced to creatures much lower in the scale of 
being than man. Rudimentary social conditions ap- 
pear in the animal world with the necessary accom- 
paniments of a crude sympathy and pity, twin growths 
from which have sprung all the fair fruitage of phi- 
lanthropy and charity in the modern world. 

Is the human mind a further development and com- 
pletion of the brute mind? With the overwhelming 
scientific evidence before us an affirmative answer is 


42 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


inevitable. Nor in saying this do we commit ourselves 
to that materialistic psychology which darkened the 
Grecian philosophy when it reached the conclusion 
that man’s mind and its action, equally with all else, 
were a necessary product of the entire universe in its 
progression. To us the universe is the process of 
God’s own embodiment, and the successive stages of 
life are but the ascending forms of his manifestation. 


“From harmony, from heavenly harmony, 
This universal frame began, 
From harmony to harmony, 
Through all the compass of the notes it ran, 
The diapason closing full in man.” 


We may therefore unhesitatingly accept the conclu- 
sion that the rudiments of that truth, that justice, 
that conscience, and that love which ennoble man 
are in him relatively higher but not radically different 
in kind. from their rudest prototypes in the most 
primitive animal life. 


XIII. The Manifestation of the Sons of God 


Along a border-line so dim, how shall we determine 
when the brute is left behind and humanity begins? 
Man is not only higher than all his early companions 
in the upward march, but the highest that any can 
hope to be. The theory of evolution brings before 
our eyes a picture of the slow upheaval of the mighty 
continent of life. In the physical continents, the 
operation of immanent forces have thrust certain 
mountain ranges far above the common level, — but 
their peaks are crowned with the perpetual snow of 
age. They will never rise higher. Among life- 


IV THE MANIFESTATION OF THE SONS OF GOD 43 


summits man’s physical structure stands solitary 
lord of all. But he too has attained his utmost ‘phys- 
ical altitude. The anatomical limits of erectness, 
symmetry, and beauty are reached. He is no longer 
advancing along the line of his previous astonishing 
progress ; nor are any of the lower tribes upon his 
track. No other animal is advancing manward, nor 
will there be. The climax of revolutionary ascent 
has been reached. Physical variations have given 
place to mental, and man’s thought now rules where 
natural selection once held undisputed sway. Mat- 
ter has reached its goal. It has furnished a fitting 
organ for mind, and in furnishing this has pressed 
to the utmost the possibilities of physical structure 
in conformity to earthly conditions, and has thus 
completed the design of the animal kingdom. Not 
the production of some higher creature, but the per- 
fecting of humanity is to be the achievement of the 
future. 

This culmination gives a fitting dignity to man’s 
place in nature. Toward him the ages have been 
tending, for him the conditions of earthly life exist. 
Instead of being the product of arbitrary caprice, 
or a special creation, flung in a moment into the 
midst of dissimilar surroundings, where, even though 
given “dominion over the creatures,’ he was like a 
foreign king forced upon a subject race who might 
at any time awake to find zs successor and lord 
appointed over him, man is seen to be inwrought 
organically into the structure of the universe. From 
this he cannot be dislodged, and the promises of the 
future are more radiant than the achievements of 
the past in proportion as the triumphs of the moral 


44 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


exceed those of the physical. Science returns an 
affirmative answer to Amiel’s question: “Who knows 
if nature is not a laboratory for the fabrication of 
thinking beings who are ultimately to become free 
creatures ?”’ 

This is a turning-point in the long course, and as 
we survey the path that has been followed we see 
that all has tended toward an ethical end. With 
perhaps occasional eddies, the current has set steadily 
from the lower to the higher and has transformed 
base and selfish desires into altruistic impulses ; 
opened the blindness of the animal into the foresight 
of the man; loosed the dumb impassivity of the 
brute into the worship of the human soul. The 
dividing line which we sought we have crossed un- 
noticed. Pain and pleasure we share with the ani- 
mals, but the sense of duty which scorns pleasure at 
the call of conscience distinguishes those who have 
passed from the realm of brute feeling into the king- 
dom of spirit. This power to distinguish a higher 
obligation than personal interest ; to be conscious of 
the infinite as above and more than all particular 
finite forms; or, in other words, to know God, is the 
mark of the human. 

Instead of spasmodic interventions and impulses 
there has been a steady influx of the divine life 
increasingly full and multiplex in its manifestation 
as fast as it became possible, under the inner law of 
self-objectification, for this to take place. In this 
conclusion modern thought turns back and joins 
hands with the result of a thousand years of Greek 
speculation. It, too, has reached the belief that the 
incarnation of God, which is but a short name for his 


IV THE MANIFESTATION OF THE SONS OF GOD 45 


bringing his earthly manifestation into full comple- - 
tion in man, is taking place as rapidly as is possible, 
seeing that our progress depends not on the ability 
or willingness of God alone, but also upon the rate 
of increase in our capacity to receive him. Just 
because the divine life is struggling to take ours up 
into itself its success seems often discouragingly 
slow ; yet because of that struggle our spiritual ad- 
vancement is sure. Himself the basis and substance 
of all that is, it is not difficult to understand that the 
continuous self-modification of the Infinite should 
slowly approach its definite end in man and thus 
finish the cycle at first proposed. This idea postu- 
lates as fundamental the principle that the universe 
is one in substance with God, gradually developing 
in its individualization from the unconscious to the 
conscious and ethical. Man, partaking thus of the 
divine nature, slowly emerges through strife and dis- 
cipline into the freedom and God-likeness of person- 
ality, and rises, as the outcome of the long process, 
to conscious participation in the Divine. Heedless 
of our dead past, fearless of the unborn future, we 
face the living present, with the assurance, zow are 
we the sons of God, and tt doth not yet appear what 
we shall be ! 


CHAP EER V; 
GOD NOT WITHOUT WITNESS IN ANY NATION 


XIV. Man’s Earthly Life Educative 


OuR conception of God’s relation to the universe 
determines our notion of his relations to man. Witb 
the advent of the thought of God as constituting the 
universe by the unfolding of his own infinitude, there 
necessarily passes away the idea of the probationary 
character of man’s earthly life. When we under- 
stand that God in all that he does is seeking to 
objectify himself in a spiritual race, it is necessary to 
consider the earthly life of man as an educational 
stage, in which he is himself developing into a mani- 
festation of the divine character. 

With this changed view of God’s attitude we pass 
from under the shadow of that thought in which the 
world has so long dwelt, that we live continually 
under the eye of a Judge strict to mark iniquity and 
by whom our spiritual growth is to be tested rather 
than fostered. Instead, we now feel ourselves to be 
under parental care, in an atmosphere of love and in 
a process of education in which our spiritual faculties 
shall be cultivated, our ignorance replaced with know- 
ledge, our wavering will strengthened, and our feeble- 


ness and uncertainty transformed into clear purpose © 


and power. The temptations and severe experiences 
of life are the means of our discipline. They come 
46 


a 


CHAP. V MAN’S EARTHLY LIFE EDUCATIVE 47 


to us not ‘that they may try whether we shall prove 
obedient to God’s will, but as incidental to that train- 
ing by which we shall acquire power in ourselves to 
will what he wills. This free and chastened obedi- 
ence is God’s true reflection in man. The process 
by which this condition is brought about, like any 
other current, has its eddies and its returns upon 
itself. Progress is never in a straight line of con- 
tinuous advancement, and the course of man’s spirit- 
ual development is one of sinuosities, perplexities, 
and hesitations. In this as in all other branches of 
his education, only by his failures will man learn the 
futility of divergence from the true path. 

This interpretation takes the “Fall” of man out 
of the category of historical events and transfers it 
into the realms of the spiritual life, and “ original 
sin’ becomes more than a figment of the theological 
consciousness. Not only did our ancestors sin, but 
we also sin. Our common tendency is to follow our 
own inclinations, to gratify our passions and natural 
impulses in the easiest way, unmindful of the greater 
good that waits upon a subordination of these to the 
higher faculties of our being. We are placed in the 
midst of this conflict in the very act of living our 
lives. The old idea of one historic Fall, which modi- 
fied the relations of God and man to the end of time, 
yields to an apprehension of this experience as con- 
tinuous and personal, a part of the opportunity and 
responsibility of every man. The thought that the 
stream of human life was purest near its source must 
be reversed. With due recognition of the failures, 
errors, reversions, which mark man’s spiritual path- 
way, we are privileged to hold the joyous hope of a 


48 | THE SONS OF GOD CHAP, 


Paradise to come instead of the sad memory of a Para- 
dise lost. 

Without God’s codperation the struggle toward 
higher attainments would be hopeless indeed. But 
God has always cooperated with man. In the early 
stages of his career, while as yet man had neither 
thought for devotion nor voice for praise, God still 
led him along his dark and rugged way. Man has 
now come to a stage in which they twain can hold 
converse with each other. Some slight comprehen- 
sion of the Creator has become possible to the creat- 
ure. Some spiritual resemblance is traceable at last 
between the Father and the child. Will God neglect 
him now? No! The patient tutelage and assistance 
of the early years are beginning to show their frui- 
tion ; now the progress will be more rapid, the inter- 
change of intelligence more perfect, the communion 
more complete. This upward movement of God into 
living personality in man constitutes the paradox of 
human progress. Man’s lingering animalism and his 
untutored will offer a mass of dead inertia, or active 
opposition, which the spirit of God must overcome 
and transform before it can emerge into light. The 
psychical world has been commonly divided into two 
kingdoms, of light and of darkness, because of this con- 
tinuous conflict between man’s desires and his reason. 

There is, however, an impulse Godward in man’s 
own constitution, and the various developments of 
his religious life are but the slow evolving of this 
divine principle within him. The fundamental law 
of natural evolution holds true in this case. If the 
eye has been developed in response to the stimulus 
of light, and the ear has come forth at the call of 


i a 


V MAN’S EARTHLY LIFE EDUCATIVE 49 


@ 

the vibrations of air, so has the spiritual nature of 
man shown itself in conformity to a spiritual environ- 
ment. The revelation of God to man is a revelation 
in man, and produces that spiritual aspiration which 
it satisfies. The history of religious development is 
a justification of Tertullian’s claim that the soul is 
so constituted by nature as to respond spontaneously 
to Christian truth — O Testimonitum anime naturaliter 
Christiane. Human history thus becomes a history 
of God’s manifestation of himself, not externally, not 
objectively, not spasmodically, but subjectively and 
continuously in his steadily bringing to bear upon 
man’s innermost nature the formative principle of a 
divine fellowship through which, with steadfast pur- 
pose, man is brought to greater light by increasing 
his capacity to receive light. 

This orderly march of humanity toward spiritual 
perfection is the highest evidence that there is a 
divine meaning in the world, and that, in keeping with 
it, man is growing constantly nearer the time when 
that God whom he has so long known only in part 
shall be more perfectly apprehended. The conception 
of man, as reflecting God in his own nature, implies 
a succession of stages in which this consciousness 
shall work itself free as the constructive power of his 
life. Inasmuch as this is a process in history it is 
not necessary that man in the beginning should be 
more than capable of God. Under appropriate con- 
ditions, however, this latent power will be evoked, 
the obscure will become intelligible, and under the 
influence of divine fellowship and instruction, man 
will attain unto increasing consciousness of God. 
All theories which ground the religious instinct and 

E 


50 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


the idea of God in ancestor-worship, nature-worship, 
dreams, and similar phenomena, utterly fail in pres- 
ence of the indisputable truth that the religious in- 
stinct and the conception of God grow in strength, 
clearness, and nobility, in proportion as the race 
grows away from the obscurities, and limitations, 
and undeveloped conditions of the primitive state of 
society in which are found the materials whereon 
such theories depend. This observed progress finds 
its simplest explanation in the idea of a vital relation- 
ship between God and man, wherein man is being 
gradually led by the spirit of God to ever-growing 
capacity to receive the continuous revelation which 
God is evermore making. 

Humanity does, as a matter of fact, show men and 
races at all stages of moral apprehension. Mankind 
is slowly gaining a consciousness of historical unity 
in its living members and also with past generations. 
The unifying bond is beginning to be recognized in 
this universal fellowship in the divine manifestation. 
A unity of spiritual life grows out of the fact that we 
enter at birth into a world fashioned largely by the 
beliefs and conceptions of those who have preceded us. 
These ideas, gradually accumulating through the ages, 
tend more and more to assume the authority of con- 
viction and the clearness of a recognized congruity 
with our own nature. In turn, that which we accept 
in truth and sincerely believe, be it little or much, 
be it fragmentary or complete, works powerfully in 
moulding our own characters and thus fashioning the 


age to come. The incidents of space and time have 


their significance only as contributing to establish 
and clarify the relations of man to God. Thus the 


i i i 


Vv MAN’S EARTHLY LIFE EDUCATIVE 51 


thinking world has moved forward from the problems 
of becoming and of being, which formed the burden 
of ancient philosophy, to present considerations of 
God and the human race. 

Since the religious life is a resultant of the two 
forces, —God primarily working in man, and man 
with free spirit responding to God, the form which 
the spiritual life shall assume will vary with the con- 
ditions of the life thus developing. The physical 
surroundings have been largely influential toward 
shaping in the minds of each primitive people that 
interpretation which they have given to the manifes- 
tations of God in nature. Much light will be thrown 
upon the beliefs of the different races by a study of 
their origins. To account for these differences at 
the beginning is not enough; the points of widest 
divergence must be explained as well as those of 
least. In the primitive stages of human life man 
recognizes in the powers without him the workings 
of a will more powerful than his own, and where, as 
in the North, these activities are gloomy and cheer- 
less, religion is at the first a reign of terror and of 
subjection to external forces. In regions of beauty 
and calm, as in sunny Greece, God is regarded as in- 
dwelling, and religion is largely a worship of the good 
under the form of the beautiful. Under the stimu- 
lating influence of the tropics, where all life is rank, 
heavy, sensuous, and the processes of nature swift 
both in growth and decay, God is regarded as wholly 
in nature, and worship pays reverence especially to 
the great visible processes through which he is con- 
tinually being produced before men, — destruction, 
reproduction, preservation. 


52 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


XV. God’s Progressive Manifestation among the 
Nations 


Human history in its most significant features 
becomes a hopeless tangle of clews that end abruptly 
and of motives that lead to no result, unless upon all 
the face of the earth God has been revealing himself 
not only at sundry times and in divers manners, but 
constantly. With all their imperfection and deficien- 
cies, other nations display a feeling after God, and a 
certain finding of him, not differing in kind, but only 
in degree, from the same knowledge and feeling among 
the Jews. Various ethical requirements in all the 
religions and in the history of mankind are a part of 
the original endowment of humanity, and an insepa- 
rable part of personality. God’s revelation in man 
is broader than any visible church; it comprehends 
the entire multitude of those in whose individual 
hearts this light Lath shined. 

The Eden stories in our own Scriptures carry us 
back to the noble Hebrew interpretation of facts 
common to all, and with which all the races wrestled 
in an endeavor to account for the obvious realities of 
personal existence, of sin, and of death. It is im- 
possible not to recognize everywhere, under sundry 
mutations and disguises, the struggle of man’s spirit 
to come into touch with the spirit of a dimly appre- 
hended God. The ancient civilization beside the 
Euphrates witnesses to us in its long-buried litera- 
ture how old is the cry of the human soul for God. 
On the obelisk of Tothmes IIL, graven in the hard 
syenite as long before the Christian era as we are 
after it, we may still read the promptings of the 


Vv GOD’S PROGRESSIVE MANIFESTATION 53 


divine spirit in his sublime invocation addressed to 
the Sun: “Grant power, and cover with the princi- 
ples of divine wisdom the gentle king. O guardian 
Sun, vigilant and just Sun, Continuator of Life, guide 
his innermost thoughts, so that he may show himself 
active and just in all things. Sublime Wisdom, grant 
to him the principle of thy essence, and the principle 
of thy light, so that he may collect fruits in the im- 
petuosity of his career. Four times he thus distinctly 
implores thee, Vigilant Sun of Justice of All Time! 
May the request which he makes to thee be granted 
to him.” A noble conception of God and a deep 
consciousness of sin is found also among the earliest 
remaining literature of the undivided Aryans. 

Still, in spite of the height to which religious truth 
thus early attained, the history of humanity distinctly 
shows the apprehension of God and the conviction of 
sin to have been increasing in clearness and diffusion 
through the ages. The equivalent of the Hebrew 
idea of a racial fall and consequent universal ten- 
dency to evil is common to many races. The same 
is true of the idea of sacrifice. Marked progress is 
visible in the growth of this idea, until in process of 
time arose the understanding that the true sacrifice 
was a sanctified will. Zo obey ts better than sacrifice, 
and to hearken than the fat of rams. The sacrifices 
of God are a broken and contrite spirit. Slowly the 
conviction grew that the blood poured out was valu- 
able only as evidence of an entire surrender, that 
in this the virtue lay and not in the mere article of 
death. That was simply incidental to the complete 
surrender of self to God. 

The universality of these sacrificial rites and the 


54 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


similarity which they bear wherever found show that 
man is by nature a religious being. His constitution 
involves these spiritual activities and conceptions no 
less than the physical and mental. No religious sys- 
tem has based itself professedly upon the natural, or 
human, alone. There is a religious common sense of 
the race imbedded in man’s nature which descends 
from generation to generation with all the uniformity 
and indestructibility of a universal characteristic. 
Mankind can never become a race of atheists. These 
natural currents of belief have rolled on from age to 
age, bearing witness to the world’s sense of God. 
They are inseparable factors of human existence. 
Society cannot outgrow nor civilization displace 
them. They have a permanent dwelling-place in 
the heart of man. Such indwelling convictions must 
find expression in the life universal of the race. 
History justifies Max Miiller’s definition: Religion 
consists in the perception of the infinite under such 
manifestations as are able to influence the moral 
character of man. 

We are thus enabled to unify under one consistent 
principle all those extraordinary instances of spiritual 
attainment among ancient peoples, and more recent 
cases in environments remote from the ordinary his- 
toric Christian sources of light. These examples pre- 
sent a serious problem to the theology which holds 
that all men are utterly depraved in nature, incapa- 
ble of any spiritual achievement, and can be reached 
by the gracious arm of salvation only through his- 
toric knowledge of the person and work of Christ. 
They demonstrate, on the contrary, an internal im- 
pulse within humanity, and even in the individual 


a 


V GOD’S PROGRESSIVE MANIFESTATION 55 


heart, everywhere working toward a higher and fuller 
spiritual life. This principle is divine in its origin 
wherever found. It is the manifestation of God in 
the slowly evolving human spirit. Hence there need 
be no surprise in finding the spiritual history of 
humanity characterized by a gradual merging of 
lower into higher forms, and in discovering many 
equivalent developments to be simultaneous among 
widely separated peoples. 

This principle was recognized in the Apostle’s dec- 
laration that the Mosaic economy was a pedagogus to 
lead the Jewish world to Christ, and we do find that 
Christianity took up into itself all the essential and 
universal elements of Judaism. Judaism itself had 
received much that it transmitted. More ancient 
religious cults were schoolmasters to lead earlier 
generations to Judaism. We have but recently 
learned how largely Babylonian and other early 
Semitic elements went into the formation of that 
faith which Israel took into Egypt; we are also only 
beginning to understand how much, both of Egyp- 
tian intellectual conception and ceremonial forms 
and types, the Hebrews brought forth with them at 
the Exodus. Each age has profited religiously by the 
struggles and aspirations of the cruder and more bar- 
barous age which it succeeded. 

The religious endowment has grown as humanity 
has grown, yet no man, nor nation, ever came at 
once into vacant spaces totally empty of all spiritual 
heritages, traditions, forms of thought. As Judaism 
was built upon the elaborate ritualistic basis of Egyp- 
tian religious ceremonial, so has Christianity been 
wrought into the native fabric of beliefs, hopes, and 


56 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


vague revelations of the nations to whom its gospel 
has been preached. The religious elements of man’s 
nature have worked out similar effects under a com- 
mon divine tutelage in every nation, and God has 
left himself without witness in no portion of a race 
made in his own image. The great heavings of the 
soul of humanity, drawn toward the heavens like the 
heaving of the tides, so far found articulate utterance 
for their voiceless groanings as to show clearly that 
the wants of Jew and Gentile were common and must 
have the same satisfaction. By the side of Job’s, 
Oh, that I knew where I might find him, we may 
put the words of Socrates, “We must therefore wait,” 
said he in describing the divine Teacher who was to 
come, “till such time as we may learn how to behave 
ourselves in the presence of gods and men.” 

These sentiments evidently show a revelation com- 
mon to all men and a common response to this reve- 
lation. Our Master’s own test is the touchstone, 
By their fruits ye shall know them. ‘Whence got 
Buddha his purity, or Aristides his justice, or Epicurus 
his puritanic virtue, or Cicero his search after immor- 
tality, save from the same source as did Isaiah or 
Samuel or John the Baptist, or Paul?” In the Bha- 
gavad Gita episode of the Mahabharatta, the per- 
sonified god instructs his pupil : “I bear the burden of 
those who are constantly engaged in my service. They 
also who serve other gods with a firm belief, in so doing 
involuntarily and unconsciously worship me.” Shall 
the heart of man in its yearnings find and express a 
broader and more tender longsuffering on the part of 
the gods of its dreams than the reality as it exists in 
the Father of all mercies and the God of all comfort ! 


V GOD’S PROGRESSIVE MANIFESTATION 57 


With all the excellences of these ethnic teachings, 
however, it is not the prejudice of personal interest 
but the culminative testimony of the natural order 
that claims for Christianity, as representing under 
most favorable conditions the longest series of these 
stages of advance, a superiority to all other manifes- 
tations of the divine life, because embodying within 
itself all their most essential features. What in those . 
systems are scattered rays and partial glimpses find 
here a clear apprehension and a steady glow. It is 
not that there was no truth in Paganism, but that 
there is more truth in Christianity. “I make no 
secret that true Christianity, I mean the religion of 
Christ, seems to me to. become more and more exalted, 
the more we know and the more we appreciate the 
treasures of truth hidden in the despised religions of 
the world.” In these words of Max Miiller we have 
noteworthy testimony from a competent witness. 

These non-Christian faiths, whether ancient or 
modern, are not the measure of God’s gift to their 
adherents, but the measure of the obstacles which 
that revelation must needs overcome before it could 
be received by them. The spirit of God has dwelt 
with man from the beginning, and has spoken to him 
with many voices. Man could find God symbolized 
in so many forms of nature and could approach him 
through so many and such devious ways only because 
he was truly revealed in them all and had made them 
a means of communion with himself. Christianity 
demonstrates itself to be a farther step in man’s 
journey Godward by its ability to produce in each 
of its disciples a nobler character. Other creeds 
produce here and there an exceptional one of lofty, 


58 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. V 


spirit, while the multitude still plod their deaf and 
heedless way. Spiritual progress is a discipline for 
the production of character; where worthiest char- 
acter is produced there is the fullest revelation 
of God. Equally true and tender, an epitome of 
the spiritual history of mankind, is the personal wit- 
ness of the saintly William Ellery Channing, who 
tells us how, when he had sought all the noble 
teachers — Lao Tszee, and Kung-Fu-Tszee, with 
Zoroaster and Buddha, Plato and Epictetus, —‘“‘hand 
in hand they brought me up to the white marble 
steps, and the crystal baptismal font, and the bread- 
and-wine crowned communion table—ay! to the 
cross in the chancel of the Christian temple, —and 
as they laid their hands in benediction on my head 
they whispered, Here is your real home.” 


CHAPTER VI 
GOD COMING TO HIS OWN 


XVI. The Fulness of the Godhead 


PERSONALITY is the highest form of being. God is 
not revealed till he is revealed as a person. While 
the ascending scale of nature culminates in man, man 
does not culminate except in God. When therefore 
the perfect man has come, he is also God drawn to 
human scale. To this great culmination nature has 
steadily advanced up to man and through man, till its 
hope is realized in the Son of Man. At last is clear 
what has been the meaning of those foreshadowings 
of joy, and love, and sacrifice in nature. A\ll this is 
God's progressive revelation of himself, a revelation 
of which man is at once the product and the object. 
In order to be intelligible to man this revelation must 
be made to human apprehension. The fullest revela- 
tion is not made until God has spoken to man at his. 
highest. Hence the necessity that God reveal him- 
self in typical manhood. 

With all men, more or less consciously, the supreme 
question has been, what manner of being underlies 
this universe, of what sort of spirit is it the manifes- 
tation, what is the character of the will here unfolding? 
By this threefold revelation God both produces and 
appeals to the tripartite nature of man, — to his intel- 
lect, to his affections, and to his will. What is this but 

59 


60 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


God speaking out of the depths of his personality to 
the personality of man, function to function, faculty to 
faculty, fitting elements of divine character to human 
capacity like die to matrix, and thus disclosing by the 
address of himself to those who bear his image that he 
himself exists in these threefold faculties too. What 
is essential in deity has its counterpart in what is essen- 
tialinman. Revelation through life grows fuller as 
the lite grows higher. The tendency is away from 
simplicity and toward complexity of organization as 
we ascend the scale of being. What is merely rudi- 
mentary in the lower becomes clearly defined in the 
higher. 

The prologue of the Fourth Gospel, Zz the begin- 
ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and 
the Word was God, unites essential deity with its 
most perfect revelation, the Word become flesh. 
After all these centuries of thought and study, of 
attack and defence, the Logos, the Word, remains 
still the best term by which to set forth and to illus- 
trate this relation of God as transcendent, uncondi- 
tioned, to God as immanent, conditioned by his 
relations to the universe, the outputting of his own 
inner consciousness into objective activity. To see 
what John saw when he penned these words, we must 
stand where John stood. His thought ran back to 
that mysterious “beginning” where whatever has 
begun began, yet in that beginning was the “ Word,” 
or the Logos, and the Logos was with God. Stand- 
ing thus at the beginning we look for God, and what 
do we see? Nothing! There are certain limits be- 
yond which human thought cannot pass. The human 
mind can in no case grasp or know the absolute, that 


i i i 


VI THE FULNESS OF THE GODHEAD 6l 


which has no relation or connection in any way with 
itself. Our knowledge, whether of things material 
or spiritual, is through the relations which those 
things sustain to us. To the blind eye there is no. 
sun in the heavens, though a world smiles beneath 
its beams. Sweetest harmonies have no existence 
to the deaf ear. As we gaze, then, into that impene- 
trable abyss beyond the furthest reach of human 
thought, we see nothing. Not because there is noth- 
ing there. God is there. But he has not yet put 
himself within the reach of our faculties. 

Secondary being can know essential Being only 
through these relations, or, in other words, we can 
see God only as, and only so far as, he is manifested 
in the unfolding of himself in self-manifestation. 
‘God is known,” says Godet, “only so far as he 
gives himself to be known.” To that extent, how- 
ever, we do see him, and this manifestation of Deity, 
this God thus become cognizable by the universe, 
is what the New Testament writers know as the Son, 
and what current theology calls the second person of 
the Trinity, God the Logos. He is the invisible God 
coming out of the chambers of invisibility in the pro- 
cess of realizing his ideal, taking a form that can be 
apprehended by and made consciously manifest to 
the intelligent universe thus produced. We can dis- 
tinguish God thus immanent from God transcendent, 
though they are one, as we distinguish between the 
sweep of vision which determines our horizon and the 
infinite space surrounding it, though they are one. 
Widen the idea of space until imagination reaches its 
utmost limit, and still there is the infinite, unmeas- 
ured, unimagined, background of the unlimited still 


62 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP, 


beyond. The Logos is God’s self-revealing to the 
limit of our faculties’ ability to comprehend him. 
Each one’s horizon is wide or narrow according to 
his standpoint and power of vision. The Logos 
marks the horizon of man’s view of God, for Deity 
absolute, God unrevealed, no one can see. 
Identifying God as revealed with God invisible, the 
Logos has been regarded as the ideal ground of all 
existence, he in whom all things consist, and at the 
same time as the active agent by whom and through 
whom the phenomenal comes into being and the divine 
idea is disclosed. In this way a worthy substratum is 
secured for all those mighty relationships which are 
mediated through him as the manifestation of God. 
Finite existences have their being through him, 
through him also as the manifesting activity the ful- 
ness of divine truth is enabled to enter into organic 
relation with the mental life of the world. At the 
same time all discriminating thought, whether in the 
New Testament cycle or later, has distinguished be- 
tween God as thus embodied and God as absolute. 
It is neither Scripture, philosophy, nor reason, to say 
without qualification that Jesus Christ is God. In 
him God is manifested, not comprehended. It was 
inevitable that God, in the course of his self-revealing, 
should disclose himself as person. Only thus could 
he give himself expression as the inner reality of the 
universe, because thus only could he make himself 
known as the ground of that which changes, suffers, 
or wills. In this way only could he gather up and 
complete all contributory manifestations and round 
them into a perfect unity. As such therefore Christ 
concludes an historic process with a twofold consum- 


—_ 


VI THE FULNESS OF THE GODHEAD 63 


mation. All in lower nature that pointed toward 
man is justified in man’s culmination, and all man’s 
own experiences, growth, aspirations, find their anti- 
type in God become manifest in this perfect man. 

Every manifestation of God is the expression of 
his endeavor for complete revelation of himself to his 
creatures. There are successive stages in this pro- 
cess of unfolding the eternal desire under conditions 
of time. All natural laws and processes reach their 
full development only in man. Without him nature 
is a truncated cone, apart from man all its lines end 
abruptly, in him they converge and culminate. Yet 
not in him as final in himself, but only because he 
connects nature with God, and thus completes the 
circuit of being. Thus the fundamental fact, upon 
which all else rests, is the moral kinship subsisting 
between man and God, by which man and God are 
capable of each other. Only through this more or 
less perfect reproduction of himself in man’s soul is 
God able to address himself to man. The germ of 
this relation is a common possession of mankind, 
alike of rude and cultivated peoples. It is not an idea 
begotten of civilization and reflection, but lies silent, 
undeveloped, and often unnoticed in the lowest depths 
of consciousness of the most degraded fetish wor- 
shipper. In this witness of the spirit within the 
soul inheres the ability to be led by that light, whzch 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world, up 
from this abysmal darkness into the full light of a 
perfect revelation of God in his true character. 
Man can think of God’s being only in terms of his 
own, and best understands the divine manifestation 
as embodied in himself. 


64 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP, 


XVII. One Mediator, Himself Man 


God reveals himself increasingly in man; and 
steadily disciplines him to increase his capacity for 
the divine. Under this tutelage, man attains, in pro- 
cess of time, a point where God can show him at 
once both sides of the shield; what God himself is, 
and what man may become. To this end a human 
soul, in fulness of time, is made the vehicle to 
humanity of this twofold revelation. This soul is 
filled unto all the fulness of God. Every capacity 
and faculty is filled to the brim with divinity. He is 
the normal man. True and unhindered progress in 
the manifestation of God through a human life must 
take the form of a human being whose faculties and 
capacities are all of normal size, that there may be 
free play for the divine influences, producing a 
character and manhood capable on the one hand 
of being forever the standard toward which God 
is gradually bringing humanity, and capable on the 
other hand of being the perfect illustration of 
what help in this direction man may expect from 
God. 

The incarnation does not make a new divine person. 
It is God manifesting himself in a new and closer 
relation with humanity. The soul of Jesus is so 
receptive of God and his whole nature is so respon- 
sive to the divine impulse that God is able to take 
entire possession of him and thus fully manifest him- 
self through him. He is the Tent of meeting in 
which God visibly dwells with humanity. Standing 
thus on the border line where God and man meet, 
Jesus of Nazareth sustains a twofold relation, one 


VI ONE MEDIATOR, HIMSELF MAN 65 


which looks both Godward and manward. While on 
the one side Son of God he is also at the same time 
the Son of Man. This is the title by which he most 
loved to speak of himself. The idea of his true 
humanity lies at the bottom of this descriptive term, 
and his real manhood emphasizes it. At the same 
time it enforces his representative character. He is 
not one among many, not merely an individual frag- 
ment of the race, but the true type and sum of 
humanity. He gathers into himself all potentialities, 
forces, faculties, powers, which the entire race will 
eventually unfold. Of none other, whether ruler, 
teacher, sage, or singer, can it be said that in him the 
conception of humanity has its complete embodiment. 
But all that man has attained, all that he shall attain, 
was existent and active in Jesus. 

Yet he arrived at the consciousness of his powers 
and attained to their complete mastery by no other 
way than that by which we must ourselves achieve 
the same triumph. He, too, was tempted as we are, 
and reached self-realization through the avenue of 
self-control. In this representative character lay also 
that burden of men’s weakness and need which he 
bore. He shared their nature in all its ranges. His 
experiences ran the entire gamut of human experi- 
ence. His wide sympathy, which enabled him to 
include man’s loftiest possibilities and noblest attain- 
ment, swept also under man’s care and want and fail- 
ure and temptations. He carried the sorrows as well 
as the joys of every man, whatever his age or nation 
or stage, because he bore within himself all that truly 
belongs to humanity in its widest reach. He can 
bring to every individual soul most helpful sympathy 

F 


66 _THE SONS OF GOD CHAP, 


and strength and comfort because his own experience 
interprets to him every man’s need. 

Inasmuch as he was genuinely human, the Christ 
was also partaker of a nature open and liable to sin. 
He entered fully into the sphere of man’s thoughts 
and purposes, and consequently came within range of 
the law of heredity as well as all other of the great 
laws that environ human life. No man inherits sin, 
but only such bias and perversions as lead to sin. 
If tempted in all points like as we are, it could only 
be because in him a like nature was susceptible to 
like influence, endowed with like passions and respon- 
sive to like motives. There was in him self-will, 
striving for the mastery; there was ambition, urg- 
ing to self-glorification; there was consciousness of 
power, inviting to presumption. What is the lesson 
of the Temptation, but that he too must determine in 
the throes of stern conflict to whom allegiance should 
be given—self or God? The declaration that “e 
learned obedience by the things that he suffered, 
points us to a process in him of that self-mastery 
through which all men must pass. By his self-victory 
on this common arena he decame the author of eternal 
salvation to them that obey him. 

Apart from all necessities of speculative thought 
which the acceptance of this doctrine of the incarna- 
tion satisfies, it meets very many practical wants of 
man’s spiritual nature. It gives a firm and tangible 
basis for the Christian life. Our beliefs and concep- 
tions are grouped around no abstract idea, no mere 
force, nor law, but about a concrete living person, 
with an actual earthly history which mankind can 
grasp and appreciate, for they can test it and appre- 


VI ONE MEDIATOR, HIMSELF MAN 67 


hend it in the realm of their own personal experience. 
Humanity is not left to float upon a sea of abstrac- 
tions and mystic ambiguities, but having this basis of 
facts, facts of earthly form and character, facts cen- 
tring in the historic life and manifestation of a per- 
son, our thoughts have steadiness, certainty, and 
precision. 

It is probable that we await a deeper insight into 
the laws determining the divine method of revelation 
to escape from the dilemma of an abnormal entrance 
into human life, or an abnormal life entered in the 
normal way. Meantime, however, we can only say 
that the question of God’s manifestation in Jesus is 
entirely distinct from the question of his virgin birth, 
and it is very unwise as well as superficial to con- 
found the two. We may admit that Christ was the 
natural son of Joseph and Mary without thereby mili- 
tating in any way against the uniqueness and help- 
fulness of his relations to men. It is worthy of notice, 
also, that the declaration of this fact lies very lightly 
upon the record of that earthly life, considering the 
momentous significance which it is usually supposed 
to bear. From the special-creationist point of view, 
such an irregular way of entering humanity was both 
necessary and easily conceivable. The difficulties of 
a literalistic interpretation of the narrative are re- 
lieved by a correct idea of inspiration and by recogni- 
tion of the Scripturesas literature. The wisest course 
in our present stage of knowledge is to hold firmly to 
the truth, which indeed grows more manifest each 
year, that in him the God of our hope and anticipa- 
tion has been manifested with a fulness which has no 
parallel and needs no increase. 


68 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


If we have firmly grasped that thought, which is 
destined more and more to mould our conceptions of 
God’s relations to men, the thought of God as not 
only immanent in but as himself actually constituting 
the universe, we will find no difficulty in recognizing 
this manifestation of himself in a representative 
man as being truly the Emmanuel familiar to our 
worship and yet springing out of the same pro- 
gressive unfolding of himself that has brought all 
else into being. This gives him a vital identifica- 
tion with humanity in its historic development and 
marks the redemptive thought which characterizes 
the entire relation of the race to God. Such a 
conception of God as appearing in humanity at the 
earliest moment possible for the highest possible 
manifestation, that of perfect personality, and this in 
strict continuance of the same laws and motives which 
had prevailed all along, solves many difficulties, and, 
when once grown familiar to our thought, opens new 
and rich mines of interpretation and revelation that 
are sealed to the present view. 


XVIII. One with the Father 


The character of Christ is the divinity of Christ. 
Disputes about his parentage, his relation to proph- 
ecy, his place in the historic process, are entirely 
beside the mark in view of this simple truth. He is 
the disclosure of God to us, not because of his origin, 
but because of what he was. The life was the light 
of men. It was not the way in which he came, nor 
what he did while here, that constitutes him God 
manifest in the flesh. What he did was the utterance 
of what he was. That one-sided Christology which 


VI ONE WITH THE FATHER 69 


bases itself almost exclusively upon certain offices 
which it assumes the Christ to have discharged, needs 
to be corrected by a true apprehension of him as one, 
not merely exhibiting certain divine attributes, but 
vitalizing in his own life such knowledge of God as is 
possible to a human soul, and as setting forth the 
moral qualities of God in the static form of a balanced 
personality. 

His likeness to God is internal; his character is the 
reflex of his idea of God. In him, indeed,.God comes 
to full self-consciousness by the way of nature. This 
fact explains the sublime consciousness of oneness 
with God that distinguishes him among all the sons 
of men. J and the Father are one. This accounts 
for the calm assurance with which he sets forth the 
most fundamental of spiritual conditions, with which 
he makes himself the test by which other men are to 
be tried, with which he defines the way of approach 
and conditions of acceptance with the Father. This 
it is that makes the consciousness of Christ the stand- 
ard for evermore of our conceptions of God, of man, 
of life present and to come. No higher standard of 
worth is conceivable than that which would satisfy an 
ideal mind freed from all temptations to swerve from 
its proper course. Christ everywhere displays this 
freedom of a mind perfectly poised. Consequently it 
is not surprising to hear this challenge, Which of you 
convinceth me of sin. By this freedom, which results 
from a perfect moral equilibrium, he becomes a savor 
of life unto all who follow him. In the course of 
history, the outworking of God has thrown up into 
view many noble souls, both before and since his 
manifestation in the Christ, who have stood for the 


70 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


help and comfort of their brethren. But to these all, 
without exception, we must walk backward to cover 
some deficiency or excess with the mantle of charity ; 


“But Thee, but Thee, O Sovereign Seer of time, 
O perfect Life in perfect labor writ, 
What least defect or shadow of defect 
Oh ! what amiss may I forgive in Thee, 
Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ?” 


The cry of the human has at last been fully an- 
swered in the response of the divine. The gradual 
approach of God to man, in a revelation increasing in 
breadth and significance with the passing centuries, 
gave premonition of a time when mortal vision should 
see God face to face. Slowly man grew familiar with 
the idea that Deity would appear most clearly in time 
of sorest need ; steadily the truth was borne in upon 
human consciousness, that these partial manifestations 
were gleams of coming glory, shafts of light in the 
east that heralded a dawning day. When, by this 
progressive unfolding, the eye of man had been some- 
what accustomed to the twilight of revelation, the 
time was ripe for the disclosure of that Face of glory 
which man had so longed to see. That long histori- 
cal course which here culminates is gathered into the 
singularly compact and beautiful statement: God, 
who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in 
time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath im 
these last days spoken unto us by his Son. Here is 
historical continuity ; he who in time past spake to 
the fathers, hath spoken also to us. Here is continu- 
ation of one divine revelation; God who revealed 
himself to man of old, reveals himself still. Here is 
increase of unity and hence of clearness in the mani- 


VI IN THE FULNESS OF TIME 71 


festation ; God, who spake in former dispensations at 
sundry times and in divers manners, speaks to this 
in One. Here is the culmination of the historic 
revelation of God, for instead of visions, symbols, 
material forms, prophecies, theophanies, is the Son, 
the effulgence of God’s glory, and the impress of his 
substance. Through all the expectant ages the world’s 
teachers have had no better word for this want of man- 
kind than that hope which is here finally fulfilled : — 


“A face like my face shall receive thee; a Man like to me, 
Thou shalt love and be loved by forever; a Hand like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ 
stand.” 


XIX. In the Fulness of Time 


Human history is the record of God’s revelation in 
mankind. The springtime advancing to the maturity 
of summer heralds its way with opening leaf and 
growing bud. All along God’s pathway toward his 
perfect manifestation in humanity, spring up, before 
his advent, hopes, anticipations, premonitions, that 
foretell greater realities to come. By these hopes 
the currents of life are guided and direction is given 
to the energies and efforts of men. This action and 
reaction between the approaching God and the ex- 
pectant and apprehending spirit of man is the con- 
dition in which the possibility of history is grounded. 

A true philosophy of history is possible only on the 
supposition that there is an actual movement, in a 
recognizable direction, of mankind as a whole. Such 
a tendency is clearly observable, though it be like 
the charging of the tide, playing its watery hammers 
stroke upon stroke along the beach, each withdrawing 


72 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


billow the lifting of the arm for another blow. For 
as the waves of the incoming tide surround and en- 
croach upon some lone island peak, so humanity, 
heaved also by heavenly influences, has pressed with 
alternate lapse and swell toward that one lonely God- 
lifted figure of the Son of Man. There was a general 
shaping of early world-history toward the Christian 
era. We have accustomed ourselves to think of the 
Jews alone as preparing for the coming of Christ. 
All historic study, however, is making it clearer that 
we greatly underestimate the interrelations between 
the earlier races and their influences upon those that 
followed. 

The great ethnic movements of the gentile races 
are, undoubtedly, coordinated with the Jewish devel- 
opment in the historic disclosure of God. Naturally, 
the primitive races were not so clearly separated. as 
in later times. Exhumed records of extinct peoples 
testify to an intermingling of the root-stocks of na- 
tions, which afterward separated both in geographical 
location and communication, with common property 
in race peculiarities, political institutions, traditions, 
ethical standards, and religious ideas. Still, the work 
of these earlier races in preparing the theatre for the 
great drama of the fuller manifestation of God is less 
clearly visible than that of the three nationalities, 
Israel, Greece, and Rome. The relation of these 
was direct and positive. i 

The education by which the Hebrews were fitted 
for the~part which they were to play was the longest 
and most specific. Among them, especially, was nour- 
ished the expectation of the Coming One. This ideain 
itself was a powerful factor in their spiritual growth. 


VI IN THE FULNESS OF TIME 73 


It took the form of a belief that God, in continuously 
revealing himself to their apprehension, would in- 
crease the fulness of his relation until he should 
become identified with them in the person of their 
divine King. There are traces through all their 
literature of this hope, and also of the effect of this 
hope in moulding their character through the passing 
centuries. As the advancing sun throws a shadow 
before it, so this approaching manifestation of Deity 
had its forerunning types and shadows in the cere- 
monial institutes, in the tabernacle, in the priest- 
kings, in the mysterious promises, in the appearings 
of supernatural forms, in the rising upon the national 
horizon of a mighty hope,—fed by prophets and 
seers, and outlined against the background of popular 
loyalty to a representative of the Davidic line, — 
which gathers into its train all their dim anticipa- 
tions, all their unrealized expectations, all their un- 
voiced longings, until this king whose coming Israel 
patiently awaits becomes the desire of all nations, 
and his disclosure, when he comes suddenly to his 
own, is the Light of the World. It was inevitable 
that a people who cherished such a hope as this, 
accompanied by every element that could fan the 
flames of enthusiasm and keep constantly before the 
mind the Holy Presence for which they looked, 
should exhibit a corresponding spiritual growth. 

It was in the process of working out the problem 
of keeping the hearts of men, through the course 
of history and an unfolding political life, in close 
touch with God, that the literature which constitutes 
the Hebrew Scriptures grew into being. They are 
the flowering into expression of the life existent in the 


74. THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


Jewish nation. The source of their inspiration and 
authority is the theocratic relation of the people ta 
God, and their consequent responsiveness to his 
spirit. To be of vital worth to it, the Scriptures of 
the race must of necessity be an outgrowth of the 
life of man as actually lived in the process of history. 
They need to be rooted in a true historical past and 
present of humanity. The recognition of these docu- 
ments as literature once was supposed to destroy 
their unique value. But reverent scholarship has 
recognized that only thus have they any real hold 
upon life, or become the true transcript of God’s 
message to Israel. Accept them as true historical 
records of race experience, and the voicing of a 
nation’s response to God’s voice in the soul, and 
they carry, in a large measure upon their very 
face, in their lofty spirituality, their confidence and 
courage, and their dauntless hope, the vindication 
of their divine origin. Take the ground that they 
are specifically different from all analogous literature, 
and all similar experiences of life; owing their form 
and contents solely to the direct interposition and 
teaching of God in a way different, in degree not 
only, but also in kind from anything else of which we 
have any knowledge, and we render them valueless 
and without authority wherever their peculiar, divine 
authorship is not considered settled beyond dispute. 
Essentially, these Scriptures are the records of an 
educational process in the development of which 
grand and fundamental truths were gradually un- 
folded through God’s manifestation in this people. 
The national life is fashioned by the popular faith ; 
the spiritual life of a nation is most clearly shown in 


VI IN THE FULNESS OF TIME 75 


its literature. The aspiration of Israel was voiced in 
the promises and visions of the prophets, and the 
deep current of the people’s desire broke forth in the 
saying, Zhe Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come 
into his tentple. 

Buoyant with this hope and armed with these 
Scriptures, the memorials of God’s fellowship and 
discipline in the past, wherein this hope was em- 
bodied, the Hebrews became missionaries of Mono- 
theism, arousing the nations surrounding them to a 
recognition of one God who communes with men. 
The two processes went on side by side throughout 
the centuries. In their native land the Jews were 
trained to fuller acquaintance with Jehovah, were 
rising to higher spiritual capacities, and were de- 
veloping. the hope whose fruitage should be the 
blessing of the world. Even their very misfortunes 
_conduced to the spread of this knowledge and spiritual 
enlargement among their captors in the captivities 
into which they were so often brought. In this way 
' they became a leavening influence throughout the 
East. Their synagogues were on the banks of every 
river ; their wealth was in the marts of all the cities ; 
their merchandise was on all the seas; their physi- 
ognomy, their language, their religious traits, were 
familiar to all peoples. The Israel of the disper- 
sion was immeasurably wider and greater numeri- 
cally than in the palmy national days of David and 
Solomon. The influence of this unwavering and 
long-continued testimony in the midst of false gods 
and defective religions cannot be estimated. Hints 
of its extent are gathered here and there by the 
record of the position of power and responsibility to 


76 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


which in all these gentile kingdoms the Jew attained, 
and by the vast number of proselytes gathered. This 
influence was more marked as the centuries wore on, 
till in the fulness of time throughout the gentile 
world there was widespread understanding of the 
doctrine of one God, of his spiritual worship, and of 
the expected deliverer toward whom Jewish prophecy 
had so long been pointing. Thus place was prepared 
in the hearts of most diverse nationalities and most 
widely separated peoples to be the resting-place of 
that gospel of grace which found its fulfilment in 
the cross of Calvary. 

Parallel with these preparations, other providential 
movements had been going forward at the same time. 
The keenly intellectual Greek, with a genius for philos- 
ophy and language and clearness of thought, erected 
his civilization along the waters of the blue A¢gean. 
There, in a period of intellectual activity at home and 
of seclusion from the world at large, he fashioned a 
language the. most flexible in form and richest in 
expression that the world has yet seen. In the 
meantime the acutest intellect wrought assiduously 
upon the deepest problems of philosophy, especially 
upon the moral elements in man considered in his 
relations with his fellow-men and with the higher 
powers, and thus stamped that most admirable vehi- 
cle for the carrying of new ideas with a spiritual 
impress. Then arose the great Macedonian, who 
carried the arms of Greece, with its arts, its lan- 
guage, and its intellectual supremacy over the known 
world. Greek colonies, Greek cities, Greek univer- 
sities, made permanent this influence and brought 
all letters and all life under its sway. Greek was 


VI IN THE FULNESS OF TIME 77 


the universal.language and Greek thought was the 
current intellectual coin of the cultured world. The 
Hebrew Scriptures were lifted out of their isolated 
state in the Aramaic tongue, and set free to roam 
untrammelled the wide realm of scholarship and 
spiritual thoughtfulness in the language of Aéschy- 
lus and Plato. This was a still wider opportunity 
for the gentile world to become acquainted with the 
Jewish hope, and the advent of Jehovah for which 
Israel waited. 

At the same time with the development of the 
Greek. civilization, a widely different but not less 
important contribution toward the common end was 
in course of realization on the Peninsula to the 
westward. Here was growing up an empire whose 
sceptre was to be universal and whose relation to the 
coming of God’s kingdom was to be most direct and 
far-reaching. The agency of Rome in preparing the 
place in history for the more perfect revealing of God 
is traceable in several ways. Primal among these is 
the national character, which gave her citizens no rest 
until their eagles were borne to the -confines of the 
inhabited world. As a result of this aggressive spirit, 
just at the proper juncture the world was found to 
have been welded by the hammer of Roman conquest 
into at least an outward unity. From the Euphrates 
to the Firth of Forth one official language was spoken 
which enabled the Advent to be quickly communi- 
cated to all parts of the widely sundered empire. The 
language of letters and philosophy was Greek. Just 
long enough before had the Grecian ascendency suc- 
cumbed to the Roman for the conquered in the field 
to become victors in thought and language. This 


78 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP, 


literary language also, with all its spiritual suggestive- 
ness, was made universal by the same widespread 
supremacy of Rome. The citizenship of Rome was 
valid among the wildest tribes and was respected by 
the most superstitious of the luxurious and cultured 
East. Thus the heralds of the larger faith were 
permitted to traverse without let or hindrance the 
enormous stretches of Czsar’s dominions, protection 
and passport afforded by the talismanic words czves 
Romanus sum. To still further facilitate ease of 
intercourse, a vast labyrinth of roads, highways of 
stone, radiated from the golden milestone in the 
Forum to the farthermost boundaries of the empire. 
Moreover, this world-wide supremacy of Rome threw 
the zgis of Roman law over all the petty states and 
principalities under her sway, so that the blinded 
Jews were not permitted to murder their Messiah in 
the frenzy and obscurity of an irresponsible mob, but 
he must be set by all the solemn forms of legal pro- 
cedure upon the pedestal of Roman jurisdiction, that 
Pilate’s “Ecce Homo” might summon the civilized 
world to behold him lifted up on a Roman cross, who 
should draw all men unto himself. <A little later it 
was the protection of this all-dominating law that 
saved his messengers from untimely death by fanatic 
assassination and secured the right of: free speech to 
those who went forth into all the earth telling the 
inspiring but revolutionizing story of Jesus. 
Wonderful as the focussing of the preparative work 
and influence of any one of these nations is, the 
guiding of them all to this one centre at this one 
point of time is beyond all admiration. Israel, 
Greece, Rome, all converge to the cradle of Bethle- 


VI IN THE FULNESS OF TIME (1) 


hem. Of the three great nations of antiquity which 
have fashioned later world-history the one cried 
“Crucify him!” yet prepared a receptive spirit for 
the Messiah, furnished in him the spiritual norm for 
all mankind, bore him in her writings, preached him 
in her synagogues, enshrined him in her heart, and 
sent forth her sons to proclaim him to the ends of 
the earth ; another flouted his message as foolishness, 
yet provided the intellectual mould into which the 
glad wine of the kingdom of God was poured, and 
bore upon the currents of her thought and literature 
his glad tidings to the most exalted and to the low- 
liest of the age; the third drove the cruel nails 
through his tender hands and feet and thrust the 
spear point into his side, yet it was her commanding 
voice that spake to all the warring peoples and made 
peace, the imperative Pax Romana, which permitted 
his still small voice to be heard. She gave a com- 
mon law to all, which secured an equal right to the 
ambassadors who proclaimed his kingship with those 
who heralded the sovereignty of Czesar, and it was 
upon her chariots and along her highways that he 
rode into authority through the empire’s length and 
breadth. Not alone in the triple inscription in 
Greek and Latin and Hebrew on the central cross of 
Calvary is seen the convergence of the ancient world 
toward Christ. All the forces and activities of its 
free energies contributed to usher in the day of the 
Son of Man. 


CHAPTER Vii 
HIS OWN RECEIVING HIM NOT 


XX. Their Thoughts accusing Them 


ONLY as successive phases of its actual experience 
can God realize himself in a personality individual- 
izing within his own transcendent being. atibat 
which to God eternally zs, to man slowly decomes. 
Man’s spiritual history is the record of a process in 
which an animal organism is increasingly made the 
vehicle of a human consciousness. Though of God's 
kin, at the beginning man neither understands nor 
gives evidence of his kinship. He appears rather to 
stand ethically at the opposite pole in stolid igno- 
rance and antagonism. God desires to overcome 
this difference, to develop man’s true affinity and 
thus to make him in reality what he already is in 
the divine intention. He can come to humanity 
only along the path of gradual manifestation in 
man himself, since an external revelation can be 
recognized no further than it has already been 
realized within. He comes unto his own and hts 
own receive him not. Tragically pathetic as this is, 
it is yet inevitable that his own should at first re- 
ceive him not. 

Man draws but slowly out from under bondage to 
that animal nature which forms the basis of his own. 
Among beasts the basest passions of the human 

| 80 


CHAP. VII THEIR THOUGHTS ACCUSING THEM 81 


world are common and characteristic. These mile- 
stones, by the distance they are left behind, mark 
the advance that man is making toward the sway of 
the spirit. Unmorality in the animal becomes sin in 
man. So long as God was regarded solely as a Sov- 
ereign, ruling his subjects by direct commands, dis- 
obedience was considered the innermost principle of 
sin. Under the conception of God as a personal 
spirit, whose manifestation brings all things into being 
through a process which is progressive up to man 
and progressive also in man, developing him from 
rudimentary to perfect manhood, sin is recognized as 
not simply a disobedience to be punished but even 
more as ignorance to be enlightened and as imma- 
turity to be outgrown. It has these three factors, 
defect, or want of conformity to God’s will; wilful 
antagonism, or transgression of God’s known will; 
and third, partaking of both these, that impatience 
of guidance or restraint which characterizes immature 
minds. Only when there is conscious yielding to 
motives lower than the highest known is there sin. 
It is not negative goodness but the negation of good- 
ness, as in Mephistopheles’ affirmation, “I am the 
spirit that denies,” and is thus the product of a will 
not yet at peace with itself. Originating thus in the 
radical element of personal being, the will, man’s 
oppositeness to holiness penetrates and distorts his 
intellect and feelings —all the channels of life. It 
discloses itself as contrary to the very heart of the 
universe and is the constant source of strife, dissatis- 
faction, and unrest. Hence it is that no sooner has 
life risen into that sphere of possible responsiveness 
to moral considerations which marks the beginning 
G 


82 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


of man, than we find him conscious of this antinomy 
in his nature. 

There has never been wanting to men a con- 
sciousness of moral obligation, and also of proneness 
to disregard their knowledge of the right. Hear 
Ovid :— 


Meliora video, probogue ; 
Deteriora sequor. 


Such confession is frequent among the ancients. 
They acknowledged themselves wzthout excuse be- 
fore God for their sinfulness and their immoralities, 
their cruelties and their injustice. The literatures 
of the nations everywhere testify to @ certain 
fearful expectation of judgment for the wilfully 
wicked. Witness the Egyptian’s solemn Inquisition 
of the Dead, the court of Minos, the bar of Rhada- 
manthus, the varying reincarnation of Hindooism. 
Whence Persia’s belief that the departing soul must 
cross from this life to the felicity of the blessed above 
the abyss of woe on the insubstantial arch of the rain- 
bow; or the Mohamedan spirit’s necessity of making 
its dangerous passage across the bridge Al Sirat, sharp 
as a scimitar’s edge? This consciousness of moral 
responsibility is a revelation, obscured often and dim, 
yet in its essence real, given to the race in its very 
constitution and made part of its spiritual equipment. 

Recognizing a distinction in the moral quality of 
actions, the well-nigh universal conscience of the race 
has anticipated some Great Assize in which the soul 
should be judged according to the deeds done in the 
body. Expectation of that day has constantly rung 
out its solemn warning like an alarm-bell. The tones 
of its call have varied with the power of the hearer to 


VII NOW IS THE JUDGMENT OF THIS WORLD 83 


apprehend spiritual realities, but the principles of 
judgment have not been permitted to go their silent, 
implacable way unnoticed of men, while they slept 
in careless security, only to awake and find their 
destiny fixed, the door of repentance closed and the 
way of return obliterated. No! The very impulse 
to project these subjective realities into objective 
visibility, in colors more or less lurid, upon the can- 
vas of anticipation, is a witness that the race has 
never been left without such monition as was suited 
to its varying needs. It has long been clear to those 
of deepest insight, and is growing into general recog- 
nition, that man exists for a spiritual end which he 
attains only through a moral process. Judgment, 
therefore, follows as a necessary experience for every 
soul. 


XXI. Now is the Judgment of this World 


Grounded thus in the nature of man, judgment is 
seen to be a continuous process in the present. It 
does not sever itself from the activities of to-day only 
that it may fall in startling doom upon mankind at 
some remote time. Its field is here and now, and its 
agencies are man’s vital relations with God and the 
ethical powers and requirements rising out of them. 
It is the inevitable sequence of an increasing revela- 
tion of God. This is the judgment, that the light ts 
come tnto the world, and men loved the darkness rather 
than the light, for their works were evil. It is not an 
isolated event, but a constant crisis in the daily life 
of man. Such is the significance of that setting of 
temporal incident in which Christ’s description of the 
Judgment scenes are cast. The Judgment shall come 


84 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


while men are buying and selling, marrying and giv- 
ing in marriage. A godly charity and works of right- 
eousness, or the reverse, toward himself in the person 
of his brethren furnishes the materials for personal 
judgment. Signs that the Judgment Day is at hand 
are declared to be as obvious as are the tokens of the 
present working of nature’s forces in the springtime. 
Plainly are we assured that now is the judgment of 
this world. This generation shall not pass away till 
all these things be accomplished. 

The evident teaching is that in the continuous play 
of motive and impulse, in the unseen recesses of 
individual character, each man is living his judgment 
day, many of them unheeding the solemnity of the 
hour and the decisive nature of the passing choice. 
A truer conception of moral requirement is bringing 
this solemn day of doom back from the remote future, 
whither it has been borne by the dramatic instinct, 
aided by the grand and imposing imagery in which 
Scripture language clothes it, to set it in each man’s 
own bosom. The effect will be that, while it may 
loom less largely before the imagination, it will come 
home with clear and decisive demand upon the ethical 
nature, and the conscience will not be eased by the 
fascinating play of brilliant theories, nor content to 
shuffle with decision through evasion or delay. 3 

The judgment to which testimony is thus borne in 
the expectation of man has its ground in the righteous- 
ness of God. This conviction of judgment, working 
as a present and discriminating influence, keeps alive 
from age to age the assurance that this earthly life 
finds neither its spring nor its completion in physical 
processes, but has both its origin and end in ethical 


VII NOW IS THE JUDGMENT OF THIS WORLD 85 


and unending relations with Eternal Right. Man’s 
path lies through the finite into the infinite; his life- 
issues are weighty with spiritual destinies. Centred 
thus, not in the region of sense and of the temporal, 
but in the region of the spiritual and eternal, the 
present life is lifted into an eternal significance. It 
is the formative time of character; and the discrimi- 
nation of character is the Judgment. The test is not 
belief, nor knowledge, nor ceremonious worship, but 
the ethical standard of likeness in character to God. 

That Revelation of God, who in himself unites man 
to God, is the standing test of man’s approximation to 
that character. Christ’s relation to man’s future state 
is not casual but declarative. The submissive, filial 
spirit, which Christ as the normal man fully actual- 
ized, is man’s true reconciliation to God. Jesus’ 
true and representative human obedience becomes 
the constant pledge and type of man’s spiritual attain- 
ment. In him the deepest heart of ideal humanity is 
accepting the divine standards of holiness as man’s 
true goal. In him man is judging himself. This at 
once removes from the judgment everything arbitrary 
and objective. It is not a sentence externally pro- 
nounced, —it is a £visis, not a krima,— but a con- 
fession from within itself, and one in which humanity 
must therefore acquiesce. 

The relation of Christ to us has this definite and 
practical effect, that in him humanity has its perfect 
form. His attitude toward God and the world is the 
true and normal attitude for man to take. Whoso- 
ever rises to communion with God and to joy in 
his service, vindicates thereby his sonship to God. 
Whoso refuses the opportunity for this, as its de- 


86 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


mands are brought before him, passes thereby from 
ignorance or neglect into intentional hostility to God. 
Such a decisive experience is a true coming of the 
Son of Man to each soul. He himself is evermore 
the Judgment, — embodying the righteous judgment 
of God. Unto them who stand upon the right hand, 
who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and 
honor and incorruption, is rendered eternal life; but 
unto them that are upon the left hand, that are 
factious and obey not the truth, but obey unrighteous- 
ness, there is wrath and indignation, tribulation and 
anguish, upon every soul of man that worketh evil. 
The Judgment, then, is on strictly ethical lines. 
Based upon the use made of the moral instincts and 
the moral light pertaining to humanity as children of 
God, it is universal in its application. J/x every nation 
he that feareth God and worketh righteousness 18 ac- 
cepted of him. That universal discrimination is not 
abstract nor formal, but is still the personal judgment 
of the world by Christ. And while continuous and 
progressive, it is still the coming, the persistent 
coming of That great and terrible day of the Lord. 
For it is determined by the experience, and has its 
measure in the character, of that representative of 
man at his true altitude who passed through the 
world, identified with its trials, acquainted with its 
sorrows, assailed by its temptations, yet victorious 
through the same divine coéperation that is available 
to every man. 

Reasonably, therefore, will God judge the world in 
righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained. 
While the judgment is related thus closely to Christ 
as a person, it is simply because character is always 


VII NOW IS THE JUDGMENT OF THIS WORLD 87 


and only personal. Christ’s character is the normal 
human character, and the judgment of God inquires 
with reference to nothing but character. Hence, 
while mankind divides from Christ, it is not neces- 
sarily the historical Christ. That is to take a nar- 
row and superficial view of the relations of God to 
man from eternity. The manifestation of God, in 
whatever form made, is the true ‘‘Christ,’’ most com- 
pletely revealed in Jesus Christ undoubtedly, but 
never without some lineaments in any man. God 
reveals himself continuously in the moral elements 
and processes of the human soul; the very idea of 
soul is that in man which is in conscious relation with 
God. 

From Christ two classes of men diverge. Those 
who strive to shape their lives by the light of reve- 
lation from God and of God, are in the way of 
their true end and purpose. They will go on to the 
normal manhood. It is only a question of time and 
opportunity when they shall attain it. Those accept- 
ing Christ in this essential way, no less than those who 
accept him in the day and lands wherein he may be 
personally known, shall not’ come any more into 
judgment. He that heareth my word, and believeth 
him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into 
judgment, but ts passed out of death into life. Their 
judgment is past who, whether heathen, pre-Christian, 
or the untaught of any kind, keep themselves in that 
frame of mind which follows the light that is visible. 
Turning unto God is salvation, and a judgment to de- 
termine the eternal destiny of one already united to 
God is needless. In the reception of the divine word 
and the constant endeavor to conform his life to it, 


88 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


the believer undergoes the same moral judgment which 
awaits every man till it be faced, and which can be 
passed only by passing through it. There is the 
same judgment for all. He that rejecteth me, and re- 
cetveth not my sayings, hath one that judgeth him: 
the word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the 
last day. But for him that receiveth that word the 
judgment is an accomplished fact. These shall no 
more come into judgment. They have passed into 
other conditions and relationships. Their relation to 
God henceforth is filial, and the divine dealing with 
them henceforth is educational. They are in the 
hands of the Spirit, who will lead them into all 
truth. 

There remains, however, the serious and large ques- 
tion, What of those who do not accept him and in 
consequence are still in the region of judgment? 
The strong light which Christ throws upon the gra- 
cious opportunities of men and the blessings awaiting 
the God-fearing soul deepens the shadow upon him 
who cometh not to the light, lest his works should be 
veproved. In rebuking so sharply man’s sinful igno- 
rance, self-deceit, and insincerity, he fixes and intensi- 
fies the idea of the Judgment as an ever-present court 
most searching and severe in its impartiality. Its 
most decisive antithesis is stated in the judicial sen- 
tence: He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life ; 
but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life ; 
but the wrath of God abideth on him. The weight of 
‘the universe inevitably rests upon him who opposes 
the law of its operations. The character of a holy 
God is utterly opposed to the sinner while he clings 
to his sin. 


VII WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH 89 


XXII. Whatsoever a Man Soweth 


The subject of man’s spiritual state will be vastly 
cleared by keeping in mind two principles: First, sin 
is self-punitive, and therefore suffering inevitably 
follows violation of the divine law, or, what is the 
same thing, want of harmony with the divine charac- 
ter. Second, The freedom of the soul, as the subject 
of moral government, must necessarily be continuous. 
Turning from sin to holiness, whenever and wherever 
effected, must be the result of the permanent, funda- 
mental choice of the whole nature. Where the choice 
is the man is. Heaven and hell are daily lived before 
our eyes. There is no compulsion to evil, to thes 
rounds of vice, to the sinks of iniquity, debauchery, 
crime, wherein some do now fondly and of free, delib- 
erate preference revel. They delight in these things » 
now, they will delight in them so long as present in- 
clinations continue. The mere article of physical 
death will not transform these. The Judgment thereof 
cannot be confined to this life, though present and ac- 
tual in it. It contemplates human actions as having 
a spiritual character and hence as of eternal signifi- 
cance. It deals with the distinction between right- 
eousness and wickedness, and therefore reaches forth 
into the future as far as these endure. While right- 
eousness issues in eternal life, wickedness has its issue 
in eternal death. Thus the deeds and dispositions of 
the present hour are inseparably bound for weal or 
woe with their endless consequences. It is sorely 
needful, therefore, to put the Christian doctrine 
on this point into such relation to the thoughts and 
studies of each generation that men cannot deny 


90 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


its force nor escape in their innermost lives from its 
power. 

As lawlessness, sin has its analogy in all law- 
breaking. God does not objectively vindicate the 
violation of physical laws, but has made them so 
fundamental in the nature of things that they vindi- 
cate themselves. Sin is violation of the laws of God 
in the moral realm, and carries its own sufficient 
punishment. If repetition satiates, if continued in- 
dulgence palls, as it does even here, who can imagine 
a worse “hell” hereafter, than to dwell continually in 
the tumult of insatiable desires? Unbelief itself 
confesses this much :— 


“Hell? If the souls of men were immortal, as men have been 
told 
The lecher would cleave to his lusts, and the miser would yearn 
for his gold, 
And so there were hell forever !” 


While “Myself am hell,’ what need for externally 
inflicted penalty? All God’s laws are self-executing. 
The imagery of a literal judgment and a personally 
inflicted penalty need not be pressed; the great 
spiritual principles which these conceptions cover 
are sufficiently effective in themselves. Punishment 
is not the best term in which to present the relations 
of God to the sinful soul. That implies a personal 
agency and an ulterior and exterior aim. Discipline, 
however, must continue even under an administration 
of love so long as error continues, and discipline to the 
abnormal must ever be painful, though it be only the 
natural outworking of sin into its inevitable effects. 

The spectacle of God’s “punishing”’ the sinful is 
not necessary to support the sovereignty of his gov- 


VII WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH 91 


ernment, nor to vindicate his justice to the universe. 
It is sufficient that all eyes shall ever behold in God 
the infinite fountain of life, the source of peace and 
joy-to all who will dwell with him, while to be apart 
from him is always loss and suffering. The sight of 
this difference will not necessarily change the free 
choice of the sinner from sin to holiness. But still, 
since God is good and man is free, among the possi- 
bilities of that prodigal soul must always be reckoned 
a welcome at his Father's house. Unfortunately 
there is little now visible in man’s constitution, in the 
constitution of the universe, or in God’s moral dealing 
with man, to strengthen the hope that he who in this 
life chooses his lot apart from God will hereafter choose 
a life with him. A sad and serious thought it is that 
Whittier sings :— 


_/ “Say not, thy fond, vain heart within, 
The Father’s arm shall still be wide, 
When from these pleasant ways of sin 
Thou turnest at eventide. 


“Though God be good, and free be heaven, 
No force divine can love compel ; 
And though the song of sins forgiven 
May sound through lowest hell, 


“The sweet persuasion of his voice 
Respects thy sanctity of will. 
He giveth day; thou hast thy choice 
To walk in darkness still. 


“Forever round the mercy seat 
The guiding lights of Love shall burn; 
But what if, habit-bound, thy feet 
Shall lack the will to turn?” 


92 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


Though possessing the power to will a return to God, 
man has no inclination. He is able to will, but lacks 
the willingness. 

God cannot arbitrarily forgive sin out of hand by 
a general act of amnesty. Guilt is damnation. Can 
God give repentance and then forgive? He has all 
along offered this, he still offers it, and it is probable 
that he will forever offer it, but the man in love with 
sin will none of it. Certain severe and important con- 
sequences follow from this close and continuous rela- 
tion of God to moral qualities. He is fashioning his 
universe upon such a plan that its whole trend is con- 
ducive to the welfare of those in harmony with his 
own character. The laws by which God administers 
the world are simply those “rules of action’’ which 
he steadily follows. Hence they are self-enforcing. 
Obedience to them is its own reward, disobedience its 
own penalty. Penalty is loss. Sin is disregard of 
these laws, either actively or passively. And the 
worst element in sin is that this unsympathetic 
attitude toward God disturbs the moral equilibrium 
so that the moral judgment is warped, the moral 
vision blurred, the action of the will biased, and 
the imagination perverted. Moral blindness follows 
‘close upon moral error. Flowing water wears its 
channel steadily deeper, so persistent sin tends more 
and more to harden the sinner’s free and plastic 
character into this sinful form. 

The hope of a final restoration of all men looks 
for its accomplishment through a second probation, 
or opportunity of repentance. Strictly speaking, the 
whole question of probation, one, second, future, or 
many, is a figment of antiquated philosophy, a needless 


VIL WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH 93 


darkening of counsel without reason. What man is 
on earth to do is not to pass through a probation, but 
to use an opportunity. God’s entire relation to man 
is not one of judging, testing, experimenting with him 
to see what he will do, but it is one of codperation 
and guidance toward a definite goal of spiritual attain- 
ment. The idea of a probative relation rests upon 
the presumption that in man’s case all God’s processes 
were reversed and “that which was perfect was first.” 
Assuming this, and finding that man is not perfect, a 
Fall has been further assumed to account for his 
present state. But man exists not for judgment, he 
has not been purposed and produced that he might 
be judged, but that he might be “saved,” by fulfilling 
the divine intent concerning him. To this end God 
is manifested in Christ, zot to judge the world but that 
the world through him might be saved. To those who 
have reached such maturity of mind as to be able to 
act intelligently and with self-determination in respect 
to moral questions, this theory of continued oppor- 
tunity of spiritual trial beyond this mortal life has 
small application. 

This becomes evident when we remember that man 
has within himself that decisive power which deter- 
mines his attitude, whether of approval or aversion, 
toward evil. This supremacy over surroundings has 
shone forth in the midst of darkest gloom and given 
us a Penelope, a Panthea, a Socrates, a Seneca, an 
Epictetus. There has been a flashing forth of moral > 
sublimity ofttimes amid the children of the slums 
and out of the deepest moral obscurity, sufficient at 
least to prove that man, amid all baseness and grovel- 
ling, still reads the law of God written on his heart, 


94 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


and owns his conscience accusing or excusing. Un- 
doubtedly, the future life must still be disciplinary. 
Such cases as the penitent thief, who is promised im- 
mediate fellowship with Christ in that life; the pas- 
sage thither of utterly untrained souls of children ; 
of newly penitent souls who have chosen the light, 
but have not yet wrought their preference of the holy 
to the sinful into the fibre of their characters; all 
these and similar divergences render discipline con- 
tinuously needful. This, however, does not necessarily 
imply anything more than was implied and made act- 
ual and representative in the earthly life of Christ. 
He learned obedience by the things whitch he suf- 
fered. He was sinless amid the opportunities and 
inducements of sin, yet was disciplined by the ex- 
periences of life. So it is possible that these untried, 
undeveloped spirits shall acquire maturity of moral 
character by the stress of moral conflict in the com- 
ing life, until, confirmed in holiness through the deeper 
inner preference of God by the whole nature, they are 
conducted through ascending stages of spiritual in- 
struction and development unto their ultimate goal, 
the stature of the fulness of Christ. 


XXIII. They will not Come that they may have Life 


Only by overlooking these deep-lying facts does it 
seem possible to hold the theory of the ultimate sal- 
vation of all men. There is no sentimentalism like 
the sentimentalism of shallow thought. ‘There are 
those who do not hesitate to declare that they can- 
not see how infinite justice can coexist with infinite 
mercy, inasmuch as punishment is absolutely required 
by the one and absolutely forbidden by the other. A 


VII THEY WILL NOT COME 95 


deeper interpretation of the idea of justice covers the 
point here raised. In the recesses of perfect being 
mercy and justice are the same. Because The Lord 
loveth whom he chasteneth; Our God ts a consuming 
fire. Infinite justice and infinite goodness are one. 

Yet, like all comprehensive attempts to reconcile 
the difficulties of a vast area of truth, this idea of a 
final restoration of all men through the gracious op- 
portunity of another and post-mortem decision for 
God does meet, in its implications at least, some of 
the difficulties which confront one who looks far down 
the vista of humanity’s future existence, or inquires 
particularly as to the condition of specific classes in 
the life that is to come. We are in danger of seri- 
ously misunderstanding the significance of Christ’s 
words concerning the immediateness of decision and 
the fixedness of character resulting from contact with 
truth in its higher forms, the highest form in fact in 
his own person, unless we remember that he spoke 
to the grown men who heard and saw him, and of 
those who, like these, should have clear knowledge of 
him. He left untouched, except in the way of infer- 
ence, a very large class of cases which are to be con- 
sidered in our attempts to systematize our belief on 
this subject. His words do not include nor were they 
intended to include the children of every land, the 
ignorant childish barbarian, nor the wretched product 
of the slums. 

It is not enough to say that death fixes character 
universally. It is not so. The infant of a few days 
or hours has no character, only the potentiality of 
character. Nor will the presence of God and the 
influence of the holy hosts produce holy character 


96 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


inevitably. That would be to make it external and 
mechanical, and therefore wzmoral. Hence there 
must be choice, there must be training, there must 
be spiritual growth in the life beyond this, if all men 
are to reach the stature of Christ, and God is to be 
loving and just to all. Inextricable difficulties lie in 
the crude popular conception that just beyond the 
river of death rise the shining heights of glory — of 
moral perfection — which may be scaled at a bound, 
by a deathbed repentance or a turning to God on the 
part of the criminal and vicious at the eleventh hour. 
Far more hopeful for these classes, as well as more 
accordant with ethical requirements, is the view that 
looks for the continuance of the same principles of 
development and laws of growth hereafter as here. 
If that God who is manifested in Jesus Christ is the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever, his relations to 
humanity continue the same, and that which has been 
is the thing that shall be. 

Eternal life is more than unending existence; it is 
existence in correspondence with God. Tzhzs zs life 
eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, 
and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. The doctrine 
of inherent immortality is a survival of Platonism ; the 
true Christian doctrine of this difficult subject is the 
reverse of this. It takes into account the close asso- 
ciation of man with God. Even the final state of the 
incorrigibly wicked, if such there shall be, will be best 
understood from this point of view. To hold the 
doctrine of the eternal wrath of God against sin in 
such a way as to establish an eternal dualism is con- 
tradictory to the idea of one supreme and sovereign 
God. To hold it in such a form as to imply that the 


VII THEY WILL NOT COME 97 


sinner is brought into a position wherein God aban- 
dons him and his doom becomes irrevocable, is to 
bring the idea of fate into the Christian system and 
to place a portion of humanity under the reign of 
necessity instead of freedom. 

But there is a sense in which there is an eternal 
punishment of sin. God’s opposition to sin must 
burn till he consumes it. It is a continuation of the 
Judgment while man continues in the condition of 
judgment. The hope of man is in this fact of an un- 
ending expression of the divine antipathy to evil. 
His despair would begin with the cessation of God’s 
judgment to follow him. That would be the awful 
declaration, spoken finally and forever, Ephraim 1s 
joined to his idols, leave him alone. That would show 
that God had given him up. It is only because man 
is related to God that the wrath of God abides on him. 
The solemn question is, Can this relation ever cease? 
Not through God’s withdrawing from man. But may 
it not come to an end through man’s withdrawal from 
God ? 

In the mystery of loss and failure of some lives we 
may see that all is not loss. The falling leaves and 
blasted blossoms return to nourish the succeeding 
growth; the very waste of bodily life is converted by 
the alchemy of nature into the production of new 
supplies. So in the often unrecognized but infinite 
interchange and reaction of the social economy, it 
would be rash to declare any life, however partial or 
rudimentary, to be without a true use and influence 
in the sum total of human life. These various begin- 
nings of existence that come to naught, blasted buds 
on the tree of life, do not fall into nothingness. They 

H 


98 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


are not lost. They but drop back into God. They are 
partial individuations of the divine being. May we 
not believe that those unhappy souls who have proven 
incapable of receiving the gift of eternal life, thus 
sinking down, are received into an unconscious ab- 
sorption into the less specialized substance of univer- 
sal being? 

In certain quarters it is denied that temporary evil 
is consistent with the divine goodness if eternal evil 
is not. In others it is denied that the divine good- 
ness demands that God should bring evil to an end, 
and this on the ground that he is infinitely wise and 
good and yet permits evil. It is continually asserted, 
too, that arguments which would prove that sin shall 
finally cease would also prove that it could never 
begin, and yet that it is here. The evolutionary in- 
terpretation gives relief from this closed circle of 
orthodox thought, particularly in this serious problem 
of the beginning and end of sin. The fact is often 
overlooked that the problem of the entrance of sin 
into the universe, so far as concerns man, stands upon 
a different basis from its cessation. In its entrance, 
we have to deal with the erring of free-will in its for- 
mative stages; in, its cessation, we have to consider 
the effect of its unchecked ravages. Its very nature 
is the antithesis of the constructive principle in the 
world. 

Will it ultimately destroy the persistent sinner? 
It may. This is man’s failure, not God’s. In itself 
sin is destructive of all relations wherein man lives. 
It separates him from God, in whom alone he lives 
and moves and has his being. It is destructive of 
love, for perfect, unmingled love is the expression of 


VII THEY WILL NOT COME 99 


perfect harmony in the relations of man with God. 
It is the destruction of personality, for personality 
consists in the realization of the end of our being, 
which we find alone in God. It is destructive of life, 
for life consists in unity, whereas sin is essentially 
discord and dissension among the faculties of the 
soul. Therefore the wickedness of the obstinately 
wicked seems to carry the elements of their destruc- 
tion within itself, and to insure that their lives shall 
be transitory. Even though prolonged beyond the 
grave, they must ultimately be extinguished. 

Each man comes at birth into the heritage of at 
least incipient personality. He is born in the environ- 
ment of a race-fellowship. His early days and re- 
ceptive years tend to develop this power of manhood. 
He also is born in God’s fellowship. To grow in 
realization of this is to grow at once in freedom and 
personality. But he is made capable of morality, that 
is, the following of right from free choice, and con- 
sequently also of rejecting it. Sin is selfishness. 
Selfishness is segregative. The wilful sinner may 
throw himself outside that communion wherein per- 
sonality exists; he may repudiate that race-bond 
wherein humanity- consists; he may yield himself to 
the impulses of his lower self till he lose that free- 
dom which constitutes individuality. Now the laws 
of the conservation of energy and of the persistence 
of force are no guarantee of persistence of form; they 
cannot be pressed for a continuation of the sinful 
soul any farther than they are also a pledge of the 
conscious immortality of the righteous soul. There- 
fore, since reversion begins at the top to tear down 
what development has built, there is no reason, under 


100 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP, VII 


the recognized laws of life, why the sinner should not 
gradually degenerate till he falls below the level of 
personality and comes again within the grasp of lower 
and other laws, to the extinction of personality and 
freedom. ! 


CHARTERAV ITI 
AS MANY AS RECEIVED HIM 


XXIV. The Sons demanding their Portion 


OVER against the problem of the appearance of evil 
in a world that is nothing else than the manifestation 
of God himself rises the no less difficult inquiry, How 
can a free intelligence once turned to evil be turned 
back to God? These are merely the upper and the 
under sides of the same truth. God is manifest 
in man, but does not come to full personality in the 
individual finite mind, except through an educative 
process of self-determination in that mind. His mani- 
festation is delayed by a formidable obstacle at the 
outset. The manifestation of God requires personal- 
ity, but only that which is free can be personal. The 
human can realize itself as divine only by loving choice 
of good where choice of evil were equally easy. Man 
must, therefore, be left free from domination in order 
that he may pass from the condition of necessity 
which environs all infra-moral nature unto self-control 
in righteousness. He must be free if he is ever to be 
moral. He has climbed into existence up the long 
ladder of lower life-forms. Never till the spirit of 
God came to consciousness in him did man truly live. 
Till that hour he had his soulless existence as a brute 
being, but when by any means this poor rudimentary 
soul became conscious of God and of personal rela- 

101 


102 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


tions to him, that moment Man was born. There is 
now discernible in him the stirrings of a divine life, 
infant and feeble, but capable of waxing more and 
more. To nourish and fan this spark till man’s whole 
nature shall flash and sparkle therewith has been God’s 
endeavor from that moment to this. But this neces- 
sitates the cultivation of a true selfhood in man, and 
the beginnings of self-consciousness tend ever to self- 
assertion. The race, like the individual, claims its 
inheritance in severalty. Father, give me the portion 
of goods that falleth to me. The son in early man- 
hood draws apart from the father, the race in moral 
youth holds apart from God. In this transition period 
lie the sphere and opportunity of sin. The very self- 
love which is essential to a real personality begets in 
its first awakenings that love of one’s own will and 
way which is the essence of antagonism to God’s 
will. In its ultimate source, sin is the revolt of the 
derived will against the primal will. The only real 
idolatry is man’s putting his own self in the place of 
God. Self-gratification is made the end and aim of 
life. The beginnings of hostility to God, whether 
racial or personal, are mainly negative, —a refusal to 
follow the highest, rather than intentional turning 
against it. Consciousness of sin grows more intense 
as men or nations rise in ethical scale. The conflict 
becomes more terrible as it is increasingly realized 
that the battle-ground is wholly internal; that in en- 
throning his own will he is not declaring war against 
an external law, but against the deepest principles of 
his own nature where he and God are inseparably 
one. Sin is not measured by amount nor numbered 
by multiplying; it is divergency of character. 


VIII THE SONS IN A FAR COUNTRY 103 


XXV. The Sons in a Far Country 


The first consequence of this breaking away by the 
race from its moorings is that man rests in self instead 
of God; has no conscious child-relationship to him 
such as so strongly characterizes his feeling when this 
relationship has been once recognized ; does not com- 
mune with him; and, being unlike him in character, 
is antagonistic toward his will. This centripetal force 
with reference to himself becomes in man a cen- 
trifugal force with respect to God, which impels him 
away from God into darkness and loneliness. He 
dwells, like the Prodigal, in a far country. Only 
gradually, and with something of experience, can the 
disorder of the soul within itself be Overcome, and 
man learn that God is his true centre; that harmony 
of will with him is also harmony with one’s own highest 
good. 

There is an element of truth in the theory of in- 
herited evil. The perversions of our ancestors flit 
through our consciousness, like the ghost of Hamlet’s 
father through his vision, beckoning us, inclining us 
to follow them. Worse still, the points whereon they 
yielded are more vulnerable in us and the lines of 
resistance which they surrendered are weakened in 
us, so that simply to maintain the same ground com- 
_ pels us to even more stubborn battle than they waged. 
The errors, the weakness, and the wickedness of our 
progenitors are stamped upon our bodily tissues, our 
nerves, our intellectual faculties, and our moral capaci- 
ties. Could sin be transmitted as are these tenden- 
cies and characteristics, sad were our case indeed. 
Thanks be to God that history, experience, science, 


104 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


and consciousness unite in testifying that while the 
will may be impelled it cannot be compelled by these 
things. Sin comes only by consent and conscious- 
ness. Environment is powerful but not omnipotent. 
The soul has within itself the determining power, and 
this, not some shadowy procession of ancestral traits, 
in its own recesses turns the tide of life to or from 
God, and is what it wills to be, not what its surround- 
ings make it. Ifa man refuses admission to the sun- 
light of God, he necessarily walks in darkness not 
only, but suffers a moral obliquity, self-invited, which 
makes him responsible for the errors of reason into 
which he may fall. In this way he becomes account- 
able for his own stumbling and for all those whom he 
may lead into the ditch. 


XXVI. The Sons beginning to be in Want 


From highland or lowland the rivers come home to 
the sea. Upon few of the traditionary doctrines will 
the modern view of the world have greater transform- 
ing effect than upon that important section of truth 
which deals with the coming of man into fellowship 
with God. So long as we could hold the belief that 
God bestowed his law in objective form upon one 
race, leaving all others in the darkness of ignorance, 
it was easy to suppose these hapless peoples to be 
sunken in iniquity without hope and without God in — 
the world. But with the growing acceptance of the 
idea that spiritual apprehension is gradual, a process 
of emerging from the brute into the human, we are 
prepared to recognize in all religious phenomena the 
confession of a soul conscious of need. Man has 
sprung from God and naturally tends toward him, 


Vul THE SONS BEGINNING TO BE IN WANT 105 


as the vagrant mists rising from the ocean, and 
borne away on every gale, return again in myriad 
streams. His withdrawing into self is the temporary 
aberration of dawning self-consciousness. The deep- 
est springs of human nature are divine. As himself 
a manifestation of God, man carries within his own 
heart that spiritual germ which, under conditions 
that God will supply, shall blossom forth into all 
the graces and glory of the spirit. His religious 
life is the unfolding of the divine element in his 
constitution. This instinctive tendency gives rise to 
his faith, his worship, his sacrifices, his consciousness 
of sin. It is upon this, the deepest foundation in 
man’s nature, that the vast superstructure of religious , 
acts from fetishism to Calvary is reared. , 

It is not too much to say that the measure of the 
extent to which man has come unto himself is the 
clearness of his recognition of separation between 
himself and God. Everywhere are found traces that 
the sons of God, even though they at first demand 
their own portion, and go away into a far country, 
yet erelong begin to be in want. The soul is con- 
scious of the presence of God within it, and in its 
inner nature assents to the demands of that fellow- 
ship; yet is also conscious of an inclination toward 
self-indulgence which is at variance with its true 
essence. Thus sin is experienced as in part at least 
a foreign element which comes into existence, and 
increases only as knowledge of God increases. Only 
in so far as man is conscious that he is a child of 
God, is he able to feel the burden of guilt, or to be 
conscious of sin. The very sin that separates, there- 
fore, unites the soul with God. No less than this is 


106 THE SONS OF GOD cHly. 


taught in all that vast body of literature, running 
back to earliest times and crudest forms, in which is 
set forth the continuous tragedy of the soul in its 
antagonism to God. The old Accadian penitential 
psalms, the plaintive litanies of the early Vedas, the 
stern ritual of Egypt’s Book of the Dead, confess 
with Augustine, Thou hast formed us for thyself, 
and our hearts are restless till they find rest in thee. 

Similar evidence of the universal sense of lack 
appears in the pathetic backward look of every 
people, for the days when God and man walked in 
friendly intercourse together. The way in which the 
various nations have worked out the idea of a fall, 
through man’s own fault, from a primitive state of 
blessedness which consisted chiefly in the divine 
fellowship and approval, shows that a natural im- 
pulse impels men to feel after God, if, haply, they 
may find him, dimly conscious that he is not far 
from every one of us. To the same effect are the 
various propitiations and sacrifices by which men 
have thought to come into the complacency of such 
gods as they knew ; and the punishments which have 
been held to await the ungodly mark the convictions of 
mankind, that the wicked were blameworthy in being 
at variance with God, and that the chief element in 
their penalty was exclusion from his presence. 


XXVII. The Sons turning to their Father 


Acknowledgment of error is not easy. It is denial 
of one’s self. Only by growing into a larger self is 
one able to see one’s error as error, and condemn it. 
When God waits to welcome the returning son, and 
when that son becomes conscious of his orphaned 


VIII THE SONS TURNING TO THEIR FATHER 107 


state and longs for the father’s face, nothing, it 
would seem, could be simpler than that the desire 
of God and the need of man should embrace each 
other, and the perturbed soul speedily find peace in 
the bosom of its Father. It is found in experience, 
however, that for man, the return to God is slow and 
difficult A chief problem connected with man’s 
continued errancy has been to square it at once with 
infinite love and omnipotent power. We are coming 
to see, however, that power is no factor in moral 
government, and that time, in itself, is no factor in 
moral character. With the passing of the doctrine 
of preterition disappears from enlightened circles the 
last vestige of the idea that God is willing that any 
should sin to his own ruin. Yet it is clear from the 
nature of the case that God cannot force moral devel- 
opment beyond its slow ripening in the atmosphere 
of freedom. 

It need not surprise us, then, to find that human 
progress Godward has been slow and painful. Man’s 
way to God lies over his own body. This explains 
why the moral ideal always runs so far beyond its 
practical realization. The early Babylonian texts 
reveal a beautiful conception of the fatherhood of 
God, and a recognition of sin as consisting in aliena- 
tion from him; yet the most pitiless cruelty was in 
their habitation. The Scandinavian Eddas disclose 
the Norseman’s worship of the Al Fadir, and their 
idea of death asa “heimgang”’; yet this all-father’s 
sons were all those slain in war, and their delights in 
that father’s house were to fight endless battles by 
day, and drink the foaming mead from their ene- 
mies’ skulls by night. The ancient Hindoo called sin 


108 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


“that which throttles,’ and beheld in Varuna one 
like unto Jehovah, of purer eyes than to behold evil; 
yet the modern Hindoo opposes to the progress 
of a purer faith the passive resistance of a soul 
deficient in any real sense of personal demerit, and 
serves his deified processes of nature with immorali- 
ties as great as those for which Sodom burned. 
The flesh everywhere lusteth against the spirit, and 
it is not strange that in the age-long struggle against 
the animalism of the lower nature, and the wilfulness 
of a budding personality, the spirit should triumph 
slowly and be often overborne. 

Still, the long and ghastly record of sacrifices by 
which man has sought to placate cruel and vengeful 
deities — an endeavor which has reddened the altars 
of every race with human blood and made the names 
of Iphigenia, and Isaac, and Jephthah’s daughter, 
representative of a countless host of similar victims 
— bears witness to the universal desire of men to 
enter into communion with such gods as they know. 
Originating in fear, as the earliest emotion of the brute 
mind, the worship of primitive religion must neces- 
sarily be characterized by mystery and dread. Man 
can think of God only in human terms, and where 
man is in the scale of moral ascent there will his God 
be also. ‘To men cruel, base, revengeful, how should 
not God appear as altogether such an one as them- 
selves? Crude, partial, and perverted, as the con- 
ceptions of men concerning God have mainly been 


hitherto, this constitutional impulse to worship is still _ 


the scala sancta by which they have gone up to speak 
with God face to face. For man at his best determines 
the completeness of the son’s return to the Father. 


i 


VII THE SONS TURNING TO THEIR FATHER 109 


In his gradual upward movements man has been 
steadily coming under new and loftier standards and 
laws. The advance has not been more conspicuous 
in those exceptional open-minded souls, who have 
appeared here and there along the ages to testify to 
the vision and the ethical grandeur of God, than in 
the rising of the multitude out of sluggish, grovelling 
conditions into a more intelligent attitude and a higher 
spiritual atmosphere. Every one of these great be- 
holders of God has acted upon the mass of humanity 
as a central mountain, which in the forming of the 
earth’s crust drew its foot-hills with it out from the 
level of the plain. None, however, have opened 
the eyes of humanity Godward like the Son of Mary. 
What he sees in God is what humanity will ultimately 
come to see. In him man has attained consciousness 
of perfect unity with God, and he is able to bear all 
men up into the same sense of oneness, because his 
complete manhood was developed, as theirs must be, 
in an ethical process with the aid of his consciousness 
of perfect unity with God. 

He thus becomes to us a true Mediator, a living 
Way between the divine and the human. He isa 
daysman who lays his hand upon both. To him God 
can speak and be understood. No man cometh to 
the Father but by him, and to him also do all that 
have heard and have learned of the Father come. 
His experience is, therefore, the typical experience 
of humanity, and by this consciousness shall men 
determine their closeness to God. By his perfect 
sonship he has made clear the meaning of the sons of 
God. In him that pride of self-sufficiency which is 
the contradiction of the filial spirit is entirely put 


LOL THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


away. The souls that have dwelt in the darkness 
of unbelief, of idolatry, and the limitations of sense 
are led out into the light and brought into full per- 
sonal relationship with the Father. This is the great 
message that he has taught us, that the fatherhood 
of God is not alone a name nor an ideal, but a helpful 
and living reality in whose power men may overcome 
all their antagonism and defects and attain as perfect 
sonship as his own. Chiefest of all, he gathers into 
himself all the motives and gropings which underlie 
the sacrifices and expiations of the world and makes 
for mankind that typical sacrifice toward which all 
these tend, but which their broken and inarticulate 
utterance can but feebly express, that total surrender 
of the will which yet shall not be its annihilation but 
its consent. In this attainment he is the representa- 
tive of all souls filled with the filial spirit who shall 
come home in loyal allegiance to their Father. 


XXVIII. The Sons met by the Father 


The ministries of sunlight and activities of the 
plant codperate from bursting ovule to opening flower. 
God’s continuous manifestation is in the ascending 
spirit of man. The race comes not out of the lifeless 
womb of inanimate things, but is the fruit of a re- 
lationship close and vital with One who is fashion- 
ing man in his own image, —/¢ zs he that hath made 
us and not we ourselves. Man’s life isin God. Sep- 
aration from God is death. God has sought from the 
beginning to impart his life to man. This is the 
profound truth which found expression in the figure 
that God breathed into man the breath (spirit) of life, 
—his own spirit, —and man became a living soul. 


VIII THE SONS MET BY THE FATHER lll 


God has been present in the race from the beginning, 
both guiding and helping it in its forward struggle. 
No slightest effort has man put forth whether for 
good or evil but in the power of God. In all his 
brutalities, ignorance, and crime, he has associated 
God with him. The divine sympathy is the divine 
passion. God has agonized in man’s redemption, — 
In all their affiictions he was afflicted; and he bare 
them and carried them all the days of old. The Lamb 
has in truth been slain from the foundation of the 
world, and God has borne with man that he might at 
last be able to bear him on to a filial spirit and a son- 
like life. We are beginning to see that the divine 
fatherhood is the background upon which ‘is projected 
every paternity that in heaven or earth is named. 
There is a kindliness in nature, in the midst of its 
dumb senselessness and heartless indifference, which 
faintly forecasts an infinite pity; there is a mutual 
interdependence of plant and animal, of lower life 
and higher, witnessing that even thus early no one 
liveth unto himself; there is a rudimentary altruism 
in animal tribes —a motherhood even of the tiger — 
that shows the divine love growing toward its perfect 
expression. In all these things God is giving himself 
for the life of the world. 

The self-sacrifice of Christ is not a unique thing 
in nature. On the contrary, it is most persistently 
present everywhere. The idea is stamped upon 
every material atom, upon every animal structure, 
upon every human affection, upon all the. higher 
nature of man, upon the angels of heaven, upon the 
heart of God. The cross is the foundation of the 
universe. Not a blade of grass grows but at the cost 


112 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


of the soil. The soil itself becomes such only by the 
self-sacrifice and disintegration of the rocky frame of 
the earth. All this is decomposed only by the sacri- 
fice of the sun. All force, all life, all energy, all 
warmth, all light, natural or artificial, upon earth are 
gifts of the sun, which, because he is Lord of the 
solar system, is lordliest giver of all. He gives to his 
children — he is parent of his system —as God gives . 
to his, largely, freely, constantly. We trace this 
principle back through geological periods and we find 
each new age, or advance of life, coming out of the 
rock-hewn sepulchre of the preceding./ As far back 
as we can follow God’s thought in the universe, this 
element of vicarious service appears. Everything 
ministers not to itself, but to that which succeeds. 
And this impulse, unconscious in material things 
and hence expressing the direct will of the Maker, 
partially conscious in the animal creation, — certainly 
so in many cases, —reaches conscious self-determi- 
nation in man. 

Thus faintly at first, but with ever increasing 
clearness, the vicarious principle comes into view. 
Man has felt the impulse of God, and has responded 
to it even when unconscious whence it came. His 
response is in the form of willing service for others, 
and is freely offered in one form or another by all. 
The citizen sacrifices himself for the state. Leonidas 
and his three hundred are repeated and multiplied 
a thousandfold in every nation. Every cradle is a 
mother’s cross of sacrifice. Society is organized 
around this principle, and humanity is uplifted and 
benefited only so fast and so far as the strong are 
willing to be crucified for the weak., Men have also 


2s at THE SONS MET BY THE FATHER 113 


responded to this impulse in a deep-seated religious 
instinct, which would come before the Lord with calves 
of a year old; and give the fruit of the body for the 
sin of the soul. Through the unfolding of this spirit 
in reference to his fellow-men, man early caught some 
glimpses of the truth that the healing of humanity is 
ever a costly thing to God. Typical of this feeling 
is the Babylonian legend which explains God’s own 
blood to be mixed with the dust from which men 
were formed, Of like import is an Egyptian myth 
to the effect that the sun wounded himself and from 
his flowing blood made all existing things. 

Since, then, we find the cross graven upon every 
physical atom, upon all animal life, upon all human af- 
fections, upon the will of man, we must conclude that 
God wrought it there. If it is stamped upon all prod- 
ucts of his will, we must infer that it is characteristic 
of his purpose. The fact that blind, inanimate matter 
is compelled to fall into this plan seems proof of God’s 
intention. Each lower type is crowned by passing 
through sacrifice into a higher. That the highest 
forms of life should assume it, and that willingly, is 
evidence that the idea expresses the deepest nature 
of God. Every stage in this process is a step of the 
Father to meet his erring sons. The vicarious suffer- 
ings and services of men are the manifestation of the 
infinite pity and self-sacrifice of God. Man has never 
had to climb painfully upward alone through trial and 
failure and pain, along this pathway of moral develop- 
ment. Each milestone in that toilsome journey is but 
an Ebenezer testifying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped 
ws. Man does not wrestle with God to win reluctant 
blessing, but God wrestles with men that he may over- 

I 


114 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


come their defect of spiritual quality, their ignorance, 
their wilfulness, and make them capable of the bless- 
ing that he waits to bestow. We are not to turn 
back to listen for the footfalls of God only in some 
lost Eden, but we see him emerging wherever a 
human soul, though it be with agony and bloody 


sweat, struggles toward the light. The entire course | 


of man’s ascent is educational. God has patience 
with his slowness, but steadily pushes his own inflexi- 
ble purpose toward the time and the stage when man 
will justify his care. Always his benevolence is his 
guide, and for what man is to be, God endures what 
he is. ‘God loves us,” says Augustine, “such as we 
shall be, not such as we are.” Zales nos amat Deus, 
guales futuri sumus, non quales sumus. 
Unfortunately all men do not advance with equal 
pace. Even when the ideal is common, each one ap- 
prehends it with varying degrees of clearness, and 
approaches it at a different rate. The open secret 
of the popularity of the masters of expression is that 
in their work the multitudes find definite embodiment 
given to sentiments and thoughts of which they are 
vaguely conscious. They find in the great poem, or 
picture, or statue, a fitting utterance of what they 
dumbly mean. Still more does humanity recognize 
itself at its best in those typical men who set forth in 
divine reality the worthiest emotions of its heart. 
This representative office is most perfectly filled in 
Jesus of Nazareth. He presents in completed ful- 


ness all those aspirations, duties, and apprehensions. 


which have been but partially realized in other men. 
By him, therefore, we interpret the religious history 
of the world. Earth knows no more passionate long- 


a. 


Vu THE SONS MET BY THE FATHER 115 


ing than that of orphaned infancy for the embrace of 
parental love. Throughout the ages, the cry of thé 
human heart in its deepest yearnings, the voice of a 
conscious lack involving all other wants, has been for 
its Heavenly Father. Humanity has groped blindly 
in the dark for the touch of his guiding hand. It 
has strained its ear, amid the babel strife and jealousy 
of men, to catch the accents of a dimly apprehended 
whisper of the love of God. It has been dumbly 
aware that somewhere, in some way, could the path 
but be discovered, its disquiet and weariness might 
be lulled to rest on the breast of an infinite pity. 
Hideous perversions and grotesque caricatures of 
the Universal Father have been the utmost to which 
the larger part of the human family have attained. 
Here and there a better and a worthier view was 
given to one and another, but never till Jesus was 
born had any mortal soul an adequate conception of 
the fatherhood of God. In his understanding of that 
divine relation God was for the first time understood 
of men. Humanity shall evermore find fit and full 
expression of what, in its noblest moods and best 
aspirations, it would think of God in his words, Our 
Father, who art in heaven. 

Through all his ascending career, man has felt a 
growing sense of organic unity and of reciprocal 
obligations with his fellow-man. He has realized the 
necessity of this as a part of his approach to God. 
There has followed a gradual relaxing of the rigors 
of savage cruelty. There has been a gradual in- 
crease of brotherly traits and a growing care for 
others. These tendencies, completed and _ supple- 
mented, became the rule of life in him whose un- 


116 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


varying custom was to do unto others as he would 
that others should do unto him, and whose conscious- 
ness of sonship enabled him to assure men One is 
your Father, even God; and all ye are brethren. 
Take that other great highway along which man, 
conscious of his alienation, has set out to return 
to his Father,—the bloody path of sacrifice. By 
the smoke of their altars and the costliness of their 
worship, men have sought to make confession of 
their estrangement and to give utterance to their 
penitence. Here again the feeble lispings of his 
brethren get perfect expression in this representative 
man. What others blindly meant by lurid rites and 
bleeding victims or self-immolations, he clearly saw 
to be the perfect consecration of the will of the 
worshipper. This sacrifice he made, and in his, Lo / 
I am come to do thy will, O God, the erring son is 
brought ‘fully home. 

While the Christ rises in this way out of the race, 
and, as the normal man, concentrates all its hopes 
and fears, its desires and its possibilities, within him- 
self, and carries with him potentially the whole of 
humanity up to the God-level of life, there is yet 
another and no less precious half of the same relation. 
It is only in the perfect man that God is perfectly 
manifested to man. It is for lack of a consistent 
application of the doctrine of the immanent God 
that our thought grows so confused and weak in its 
endeavor to describe the meeting of God and man in 
Jesus. Conceiving of God as a remote Creator and 
Ruler, we can never make his entrance into human- 
ity, and all the consequences that follow, seem other 
than official and extraneous. On the other hand, the 


VuI THE SONS MET BY THE FATHER tb 


conception of God as in himself constituting the 
actual substance of the entire universe and giving 
rise to all its forms in the process of his own self- 
revealing, presents to our thoughts a God who is bone 
of our bone and life of our life; for it is only asa 
manifestation of him that we exist. 

With this fuller light that God has given us con- 
cerning himself, we no longer say that God has come 
down unto man, but that he has come up with him. 
Whatever, then, of spiritual quality we have found 
in man is but the echo of its antitype in God. In 
practical effect it is indifferent whether we say, Thus 
far has God brought humanity forward; or, Thus far 
has God manifested himself in man. The Christ’s 
entire earthly life, because he was himself the eul- 
mination of manhood, was at once a perfect expres- 
sion of God’s nature and of his attitude toward man. 
The cross of Christ is the measure of the cost at 
which God is striving to manifest himself in human- 
ity and bring it unto himself. Through taking form 
in their own flesh, it is possible for God to set forth 
in vivid and touching manner to what lengths —to 
the utmost possible lengths —he will go in order to 
make his erring children partakers of his own life. 
The death of Christ is therefore the farthest. possible 
remove from mere aimless example or illustration of 
God’s love. It follows upon a calm, deliberate, pa- 
tient carrying out of the original purpose which had 
as its end the conformation of the race to the divine 
character. Whom he foreknew, he also foreordained 
to be conformed to the image of his Son. The Christ 
did not suffer that he might exhibit, as ina drama, 
the divine power or the divine pity. But in him was 


118 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


the manifestation of God in love, in compassion, in 
sympathy, in power, in truth, in life, in antagonism 
to evil. In him God is bearing our sins and carrying 
our sorrows. 

The universe itself, indeed, is but the utterance 
of the divine thought in self-sacrifice. God has been 
giving himself to man through all these eons since 
began this vast unfolding. / To live is to love, and to 
love is to give self to the loved one’s service. / Hence 
all the universe, with myriad fingers that never falter, 
has pointed to Golgotha! The coming of God along 
this way to meet his children, and to do for them 
more than they could ask or even think, was but the 
culmination for which all precedent ages was prepa- 
ration. The privations, the meek endurance, the 
scourging, the thorn crown and the cross, the spear 
thrust, the pierced hands of service and feet of love, 
the death and burial, — these were merely incidental, 
but the Father, forgive them was of eternal, un- 
changing, and unchangeable purpose; to this end 
came he forth! 


XXIX. The Sons restored by the Father 


The Father has come far down the way to meet 
his returning sons, to which return indeed his own 
impulse inspires them. But now while they stand 
without, bowed down with shame and conscious un- 
worthiness and guilt, how shall they be given peace 
and made to feel at home in their Father's house? 

Every epoch that has given attention to this funda- 
mental question has formulated its answer in different 
terms. The prevailing conceptions of each age de- 
termine the form of its reply. As the thoughts of 


VIII THE SONS RESTORED BY THE FATHER 119 


men have been dominated by one idea or another, the 
process has been described almost exclusively in one 
or another class of the metaphors in which the Script- 
ure writers presented it in their striving to make the 
truths of divine revelation speak the language of daily 
life. The words “ vicarious,” ‘“expiation,” “substitu- 
tion,’ “ransom,” “satisfaction,” “imputation,” have 
been in common use often without much inquiry as 
to how they got their meaning, or very exactly what 
their meaning is. These theories contemplate sin as 
an objective reality, whereas it is not external, but in- 
ternal ; not objective, but subjective; not superficial, 
but radical. It is sometimes active, sometimes pas- 
sive ; it is sometimes sullen, and again openly rebel- 
lious. But everywhere and always it is proportional 
with the degree to which the soul is yet apart from 
the life of God. 

As sin inheres in the deepest springs of human 
nature, its remedy must penetrate no less deep. The 
theory of imputed righteousness was inevitably cor- 
related with a doctrine of imputed guilt. But when 
the whole subject is brought down from the realms 
of bloodless abstractions into the range of real and 
permanent personal experience in every man’s con- 
sciousness of his own sinfulness, salvation must be 
regarded also as equally an experience rooted in 
man’s Own consciousness. Character is salvation. 
But character, because grounded in personality, is 
not transferable. From its very nature spiritual life 
cannot be vicarious. It is the response of the in- 
dividual soul to the workings of God within it. It 
is one’s own growth in the higher ranges of one’s 
nature. One person can no more grow for another 


120 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


than can one tree draw for another the nourishing 
elements from the soil and convert the vital sap into 
the waving glory of branch, and leaf, and fruit. It is 
no remission of sins, therefore, to withhold punish- 
ment from the wrong-doer; nor can the penalty of 
wrong-doing be laid upon the innocent instead of the 
guilty. The offer of God in Christ, then, is not of a 
salvation ready-made. Christ can never be received 
by either God or man as a substitute for godly char- 
acter. Apart from holiness of life there is no salva- 
tion. The mercy of God is merciful only because it 
ends in righteousness of life. All God’s dealing with 
man is in order to a character after the tmage of him 
that created him. God gives us power to become 
sons of God; he does not give us Christ to be the 
Son of God in our stead. Salvation is character per- 
fected. Destiny is the harvest reaped from seeds of 
character sown in reiterated choice. 

Forgiveness cannot be spoken and forthwith be 
done. It is more than absolution ; it is the putting 
away of sin itself. In the self-centering of sin there 
is a severance of the soul’s own unity. It is divided 
against itself, and torn and rent, because the rudi- 
mentary personality of the soul is seceding from 
God, in whom is its completeness and the perfecting 
of its powers. Wherefore the forgiveness of sins is 
a healing. It brings peace by quenching the fires of 
strife. No lasting peace is possible to human souls 
till they are one in spirit with the Oversoul from 
which they spring. Sin is put away by putting away 
the disposition to sin, and personal disposition is put 
away only by changing it. In this, man cannot be 
passive. Nocrisis in a man’s life can demand a more 


VIII THE SONS RESTORED BY THE FATHER 12] 


intense energy than that act of self-surrender in 
which he transfers the motive power of his life 
from its centre in himself into God. He may be in- 
fluenced to this yielding by the divine spirit, but the 
capitulation he must himself make. In the inner- 
most recesses of personality, where the spirit of God 
presents itself to the spirit of man in its last retreat, 
having broken down all defences and brought to light 
all evasions, God does so coéperate with the human 
will as to enable it to make that exchange of its 
supreme purpose which effects a total revolution of 
life. 

These agonies of decision are the birth-pangs of 
the child of God. It is the passing out of the state 
in which the service of self is the ruling motive into 
a state that finds its ruling motive in the service of 
God. He is anew man from that moment, and be- 
cause a new man he stands toward God in a new rela- 
tion. The essence of his nature is the same as 
before, but he now recognizes God as akin to him- 
self and begins to realize the true end of his being. 
In the opening of the eyes that follows this sight of 
God, the true relations of things are clearly seen. No 
one has found the truth until he has found it for him- 
self; no man has heard the voice of God who has 
heard but the echo of that voice speaking through 
books or teachers or tradition. God’s voice in the 
individual soul is what wakens that soul to newness 
of life. When this is heard and heeded, the soul is 
new-born; it is born from above. This conversion is 
a readjustment of the forces of the soul, their re- 
arrangement about a different centre, their shaping 
toward a new end. The “Sanctification” of the 


I 


122 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


schools is but the carrying forward of the soul 
forces along these new lines, which are laws estab- 
lished from the beginning for the human soul. The 
truth of the spirit does not destroy but fulfil the 
moral constitution of the mind. The soul’s right- 
eousness is not legal nor imputed; but is real. It is 
a righteous soul. It has become such through the 
impartation of the divine power to become the child 
of God. God and man are united in a harmony that 
is fundamental. Being reconciled to God, we have 
peace with God. 

Accustomed as we are, through long fenehin to 
think of man’s relations to God in either the com- 
mercial terms of debtor and creditor or the legal 
terms of guilt and penalty, we find it hard to accept 
the consequences of a relationship resting upon the 
original filial and paternal basis. It is at first hard 
to realize that God is saving humanity from within 
rather than from without; through a process of 
education rather than of administration. Not his 
law nor his revelation, but God himself, is the salva- 
tion of the world. He brings man unto himself not 
by satisfaction of law, but by communication of life. 
Man does not enter into the legal rights of an heir, 
but into the filial spirit of a son. In the restoration 
of his children, God exercises his whole character and 
is not less just in pardoning than in permitting sin to 
work out its own penalties till it bring the sinner to 
himself. This is the aim of all his acts. Punishment 
for past transgressions and the removal of guilt, the 
primary problems where God is regarded chiefly as 
Ruler and Judge, drop into a very secondary place 
when the whole process is seen to be educational, 


VII THE SONS RESTORED BY THE FATHER 123 


developing manhood till it shall desire to put away 


evil and put on righteousness. @ 
“ Heaven 


Means crowned, not vanquished, when it says forgiven.” 


God’s restoring man, grown conscious and willing, 
to spiritual oneness with himself has been often 
described in terms of the mart, the royal court, the 
bar, the altar, but so far it never has been systemati- 
cally and consistently set forth in terms of life. 
Naturally the formal idea was based upon the notion 
of a sovereign, and theologies fashioned under its 
influence are dominated by that figure. Just as 
naturally the vital idea finds expression in the word 
“Father.” The Old Testament presents the matter 
under the formal type; the New, under the vital. 
Jesus brought about this great revolution in man’s 
idea of God. Whereas men had been accustomed to 
say the Lord is a great King above all gods, from 
him they learned to say Abba, Father. 

Within this circle of vital relationships the con- 
sciousness of Jesus moves. He represents in him- 
self the longing of man for fellowship with God, 
since in him the spiritual aspiration of the race 
reaches its meridian. He represents also God’s 
yearning over man, since in him, as the perfectly 
normal man, God has. attained perfect manifesta- 
tion. Hence Christ’s sense of his own sonship and 
of the fatherhood of God is the standard for all men. 
We may understand, then, that distinction which the 
Scripture writers maintain between the “Word” and 
the metaphysical relation which God in revelation 
sustains to God absolute, and the name “Son” by 
which Jesus himself loves to translate into the no- 


124 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


menclature of human life that divine relationship to 
men of which human fatherhood is but a dim and 
partial reflection. 

In Christ is shown at once God’s vital union with 
man and man’s vital union with God, through which 
reciprocal life the healing of God’s wholeness may 
pass into the partialness of man’s nature and enable 
it with a divine power to be triumphant over evil. 
This is the power which in Christ is given to men 
to become sons of God. The great want whereof we 
stand in need is not an enlightening of the- mind 
chiefly, not merely a declaration even of the divine 
love, but a strengthening of the weak will powerless 
to do right. We wait for some motive that will 
unclench the contracting grip of sin, and open wide 
the channels of life outward, enlarge the realm and 
range of the freed spirit, and turn reluctant submis- 
sion into glad codperation. Our veins that flow so 
flaccid and sluggishly, throb with an abundant life 
when they become channels for the vitality of God. 

The passion of Christ was at once the perfecting of 
man’s sonship and a revelation of the patient tender- 
ness of God. In Christ not only was God manifesting 
himself in man, but, man also in him did actually in 
the power of God meet the shock of evil and the 
wrath of wickedness. Hence the warfare, in his case, 
between humanity at its flower and the forces of evil, 
which culminate in such bitter antagonism, is still the 
‘conflict through which every soul, according to its 
measure, is to achieve the victory over self and over- 
throw the world. What riches of revelation unuttera- 
ble God spake to him in those bitter experiences he 
is ready to speak to every soul as soon as it shall 


vil © THE SONS RESTORED BY THE FATHER 125 


become able to bear them. Meantime, a hardened 
and hopeless world sees in the broken heart of their 
brother — broken through sorrow for them —a revela- 
tion of the eternal pity ; in his self-sacrifice they see 
an imperial kindliness of holiness toward sinfulness 
that subdues and melts them. By recognizing and 
acquiescing in this divine love, joined to human love 
as an act of self-sacrifice ‘(for us men and for our 
salvation,’ the softened heart is brought into harmony 
with the will of God thus interpreted, and the antag- 
onism is atan end. The choked fountains of human 
nature are unsealed. The divine elements in it are 
called forth and strengthened till they disclose the 
divine image and likeness. Only in this way can 
character be transformed. Though the innocent may 
suffer with, he cannot suffer instead of the guilty. Our 
relation to God, to be helpful and real, must be genuine 
and personal, not fictitious and substitutionary. 

So inclined is human nature, in its moral struggle, 
to wait for help from without rather than to rally and 
discipline its own forces, that the chief reluctance to 
accept this understanding of the divine process will 
be felt just here where we are asked to surrender the 
medieval notion of an objective atonement. It is 
feared that we shall lose the sweet comfort and as- 
surance which accompany the belief that Christ’s 
blood has washed us clean and that his sacrifice paid 
all our debt. Just here, however, where it is most 
needed, this conception most fully justifies itself to 
discriminating thought. If it does not say that Christ 
himself made an atonement for men, or died a substi- 
tutionary death for men, it only descends to a deeper 
and firmer foundation and says that in Christ is mani- 


126 THE SONS OF GOD CHAP. 


fested the eternal love of God for men, and his un- 
wearied endeavor to reconcile them to himself. It 
brings into clear view the everlasting arms of love as 
having been beneath us from eternity, and is thus in 
the line of historic succession to the best that is in 
any theory of the atonement. It does not interpret 
this deeply moving revelation of God as the self- 
immolation of mercy, but rather as an exhibition of 
that mother-love which from the first spasm of agony 
gives her life for her child’s life, not deliberately and 
saying, This I do because I love you, but, with entire 
self-obliteration, hearing its cry and seeing its need 
hurries to its relief. The idea of a vicarious expiation 
has never been ethically satisfactory, and with every 
advance in recognition of individual responsibility it 
has become less tenable. 

It will go far, therefore, toward placing this vital 
doctrine upon immutable moral foundations to recog- 
nize in Christ, not merely a victim artificially bridging 
by his sacrifice a chasm between God and humanity, 
but the representative typical man who presents in 
his gracious and blameless life the true life-form for 
humanity, by which it is to be fashioned and by which 
we shall interpret forever our high calling of God in 
Christ Jesus. His was a sacrificial life, exemplifying 
the normal soul’s responsiveness to God, and since 
this made him the apex of humanity, it also enabled 
him to feel and manifest the yearning of God over 
men. His unmerited death, while testifying how 
holily and hardily he held his conviction of right and 
his confidence in God, has its chief significance in 
bearing witness to God’s love for man, as he saw 
it, and thus becoming the most effective means of 


VIII THE SONS RESTORED BY THE FATHER 127 


reconciliation. It goes far beyond example, however 
worthy. It is love and not love alone, but love 
ripened into sympathy and expressed in service. A~ 
revelation to the intellect removes doubt, but is not 
in itself sufficient to reconcile the antagonistic affec- 
tions. The revelation of sovereignty may subdue 
resistance, but will not of itself win loyalty. But the 
revelation of sympathy touches the lowest depths 
of being. Through this God enters and animates 
the soul. The darkened intellect is enlightened ; 
the hostile will is won; the misplaced affections are 
gained. An influence holy and restoring spreads 
throughout the soul, and the wandering son enters 
and dwells gratefully and lovingly in his Father's 
House. 


THE FAMILY OF GOD 


CHAPTER IX 
OUR FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN 


XXX. God Man’s Dwelling-place in All Generations 


As we turn from contemplating the development 
of existing conditions to consider the character of 
present influences and to forecast their workings, we 
seem to pass into anew world. It is doubtful whether 
so conspicuous and sharply defined a boundary line 
between two phases of thought can be traced else- 
where in history as marks the recent transition from 
the merely successive to the organic as the determin- 
ing factor in human relations. The life that now is 
has been shaped almost wholly by ideas which re- 
garded men as isolated atoms and society as an 
aggregate of these units. Politics, law, theology, 
have all been individual. Of late, however, there is 
a notable change. The controlling idea in all depart- 
ments of thought is that of the vital oneness of man- 
kind, and a social element is thereby introduced into 
all theories and forms of activity. This was the 
keynote in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and 
we are beginning to discover that the largest move- 
ments and principles of the modern world find ample 
room and a fit setting in the framework of that 
marvellous summary of man’s privileges and duties 
which he gave to his disciples, saying, After this 
manner pray ye. 

131 


132 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


Human life is a continuous becoming; and to- 
morrow as truly future as the end of the world. The 
past does not fall away and perish, nor does the future 
exist only in the airy fabrics of fancy, but an indis- 
soluble unity binds that which has been to that which 
is to be. This unbroken continuity rises out of the 
duration of that universal being which is the abiding 
basis of all phenomena. The successive events of 
time are the several manifestations of this invisible 
ground. Only as individualizations of this greater 
underlying life do the separate generations of men 
attain an organic oneness with each other. The 
possibility of human history lies therefore in the 
eternal life of God as the unchanging background of 
its successive phenomena. It is in him that we live 
and move not only, but are all alike — whether chil- 
dren of an earlier or a later day — borne in the bosom 
of the All-Father. Every advance of knowledge more 
fully justifies the saying of Pascal: “The entire suc- 
cession or men, through the whole course of ages, 
must be regarded as one man.” 

Inasmuch as man is himself the visible form of the 
divine life, it is his progress, as he struggles upward 
into fuller development and individuality, conquering 
the opposing elements both within and without, that 
constitutes the substance of history. Because human- 
ity is an organic whole, developing itself in institu- 
tions, customs, and laws, each new stage not a new 
dispensation but the embodiment of forces that reach 
back to the beginning, all particular forms and influ- 
ences are interpreted by the general movement and 
are seen to be the gradual unfolding in orderly process 
of a deeper and more universal life. This gives 


IX GOD MAN’S DWELLING-PLACE 133 


undying interest to the faintest glimmerings of know- 
ledge concerning man’s beginnings, however crude 
and low, and clothes with a present significance every 
fragment of pottery or sculptured brick or clay cylin- 
der or papyrus script that brings back into touch with 
our day peoples, however ancient, whose long silent 
pulses still throb in our veins. In this way the early 
civilizations along the Euphrates and the Nile, the 
ancient dwellers in the Hellenic peninsula and by the 
Tiber, and they who thronged the Syrian hillsides, as 
well as the myriads that swarm in China and India or 
in Africa, are part and parcel of an individual whole. 
If the story of the nations seems broken and con- 
fused, marred by unreason and selfishness and pain- 
ful with misery and gloomy with evil, it is because 
it is the record of a race in the throes of a moral 
struggle, of which the beginning with its dust and 
sweat and blood is visible, but the final victory is 4 
largely hidden from our view. To deny, however, 
that a dawn does lie beyond these shadows of night 
is to fail utterly to grasp the meaning of man’s life- 
story and the forces that grapple in this strife. The 
obstacles which impede him are the materials from 
which man shall yet build his triumphal arch. 

It was a profound remark of Schilling that, History 
as a whole is a successive revelation of God. Re- 
garding humanity as a culmination of that universal 
unfolding which results from God’s self-evolution, it 
is plain that this process both provides for the possi- 
bility of history and at the same time determines its 
methods. God is seen to be not wholly outside the 
race-struggle, but included in it as its mightiest power 
and its shaping force. Human history, then, results 


134 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


from the codperating of God with man in a continu- 
ous development, each passing phase, so far as it ac- 
cords with the true destiny of man, rendered durable 
by being taken up and embodied in the next succeed- 
ing. The difficulty of recognizing as beneficial very 
many of the harsher phenomena appearing in the 
course of this outworking, is greatly minimized by 
the conception of the earthly life of humanity as a 
structure still in process of completion, upon which 
God and man must work together till the head- 
stone shall be brought forth. This action and re- 
action between the human spirit and the divine spirit 
explains the coincidences of preparedness on man’s 
part at the same time with new and fuller revelations 
of God, such as characterize the time of Christ’s ap- 
pearing, the Reformation, orthe settlement of America. 
At the same time, God is not to be regarded as over- 
bearing man’s will, but as drawing it forth through a 
universal educative process which unfolds the separate 
elements of his constitution, and brings them out into 
their field in the world. In the history of mankind, 
therefore, we see God’s chiefest work in time, and are 
enabled to see how all apparently isolated events form 
a part of that orderly series which tends to the divine 
glory through the highest welfare of mankind. 


-XXXI. Have we not All one Father ? 


A feature always accompanying the growth of 
knowledge is the taking on by old conceptions of new 
and widening meaning at every stage. In proportion 
as better acquaintance with humanity as a whole 
supersedes the ancient narrow and jealous tribal 
notion of relationship with an increasing sense of 


1X HAVE WE NOT ALL ONE FATHER 135 


unity, not only between man and man but between 
man and all things else, the idea of a universal Father 
becomes possible. The power in which the physicist 
discovers the fountain of all force ; the life which the 
biologist sees palpitating in every atom of the uni- 
verse; the law which the student of ethics finds de- 
termining all intelligent activity toward righteous- 
ness; this the filial spirit of humanity everywhere 
hails, Adba, Father. 

This recognition of a common Father for all men 
follows naturally upon the widening of the universe 
through scientific discoveries of modern times. Until 
the unity of nature was demonstrated, it was impossi- 
ble to be assured of one universal will. While hu- 
man history was considered as but a swift passage 
from nothingness to night, still painful however short, 
men might recognize a creator, acknowledge a sover- 
eign, or cower before a fate, but none could lift hope- 
ful hands of entreaty to a parent pitying and compas- 
sionate. When once the grandeur of that whole, of 
which earth forms so small a part, is realized, and 
when the tremendous sweep of the human ages, both 
past and future, begins to be understood, and when 
there comes a sense of that close relationship which 
links together the most widely separated peoples and 
in the most palpable way causes the acts of long- 
buried generations still to trouble Council Boards and 
Exchanges of to-day, no one has any longer the hardi- 
hood to claim a special proprietorship in him who is 
the universal scource of all alike, but is willing hum- 
bly to join with those of any age or of any nation in 
the common acknowledgment, Our Father. 

As the being of God is fundamental to all reality, 


136 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


so man’s idea of God is formative of all his secondary 
ideas. Men necessarily approximate what they wor- 
ship, since in that is realized their highest ideals. 
There is no more powerful influence at work among 
men than the idea which they have of God. The 
different stages of human progress could have no 
truer criterion than the predominant meaning which 
this word conveyed to the general mind. When men 
have thought of Deity as capricious, they have been 
superstitious; when they have thought of him as 
inflexible, they have been fatalists ; when they have 
thought of him solely as Supreme Ruler, they have 
become servile; only when they recognize in him 
that balance of love and law which together make up 
the idea of father, have they stood upright and loyal 
in the spirit and power of conscious sonship. 

Thus by observation of the past we may mark the 
drift of the historic constellations and discern the far- 
off end toward which the race is moving. The shift- 
ing warp and flying shuttles of time and circumstance 
are steadily revealing the outlines of a majestic Form 
who, otherwise unseen, is more and more disclosed as 
the central figure in the lengthening tapestry of hu- 
man life. God is conceived as the substance of all 
humanity, manifesting himself most fully in the per- 
sonal relationships and attainments of mankind. This 
growing recognition of a universal fatherhood in God 
is the justification of the idea of a universal brother- 
hood in man. 


XXXII. All we are Brethren 


The natural history of an idea is no less worthy of 
careful study than that of a plant or animal. Tracing 


IX ALL WE ARE BRETHREN 137 


the gradual expansion of the idea of race unity from 
the time when the stranger was an enemy and only 
kin were kind, up to the vigorous sense of human- 
ity which characterizes the present, will strengthen 
conviction that there is a tendency toward practical 
recognition not only of the solidarity of the human 
race as ascientific fact, but of the brotherhood of man 
as an accepted moral obligation. Human life is seen 
to be a cathedral of grander proportions and with 
closer mutual relationships between its parts than 
has*been before supposed. Obligations and opportu- 
nities take on a wider meaning; and with a widening 
of the social horizon come new and larger social duties. 
Springing from a common origin, sharing the one di- 
vine impulse which is marshalling all alike to a com- 
mon rallying-point, it is impossible longer not to take 
into account all races and conditions of men. The 
interests of the individual are seen to be inseparably 
bound with the interests of society, and there is left 
no room for class distinctions or for pride of race. 
Never was the interest in man simply as man so 
widespread as now; never was the sense of society’s 
responsibility for its members so strong. This convic- 
tion of brotherhood, not wholly new but stronger and 
more general than ever before, seeks expression in 
many ways. It not only builds churches, but founds 
industrial schools; it erects the model tenement as 
well as endows colleges, and trains the unskilful in the 
elements of domestic economy no less than in the 
principles of the way of life. The world is drawing 
close together. If the competitions of trade and in- 
dustry are no longer local but are controlled by the 
markets of the world, on the other hand the progress 


138 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


and prosperity of each region become the whole world’s 
concern. Free interchange of thought and faith are 
gradually bringing all to the same level. He that has 
eyes can see history move and discern not vaguely 
that a united brotherhood of man is its destination. 
Distance no longer makes difference in the morality 
of treatment of our fellow-men. What is unjust to a 
neighbor is still unjust half-way around the globe. 
Thus all questions assume a sociological bearing, and 
we recognize that the heart of those problems with 
which society wrestles to-day is not labor, nor wealth, 
nor organization, but right human relations, — in other 
words, it is the question, How may the children of a 
common Father all come most speedily into their birth- 
right of sonship to God ? 


XXXIII. The Commonwealth of Spirit 


Out of man’s consciousness of imperfection has 
grown his expectation of a time and place in which 
that struggle for the better, so constantly baffled and 
defeated here, shall be realized. Crude enough these 
imaginings have been for the most part, reflecting as 
they did the moral infancy of the race, but wherever 
the aspiration has: been the most earnest and the 
desired attainment most clearly discerned, the concep- 
tion of that worthier state has been noblest. Gradu- 
ally the idea has grown definite and influential upon 
current life. Just tothe extent that the distant bourn 
of humanity has been understood and God has been 
felt as a present power, heaven has come to be recog- 
nized as consisting not in a place of undisturbed 
felicity but in a condition of unhindered communion 
with him. 


IX THE COMMONWEALTH OF SPIRIT 139 


This sense of the indwelling of God and his cooper- 
ation with men has enormously expanded the horizon 
of human life. Since God is a being not separate from 
man but one with him, therefore no man is separate 
from his fellow-man but is also one with him. Since 
man has had his dwelling-place in God from the begin- 
ning, his growth and completeness are likewise to be 
attained only in God. These twin ideas, the father- 
hood of God and the brotherhood of men, have im- 
mense consequences in their carrying out. They 
transform the whole universe into a household, of 
which the earth is but a single room; it makes of all 
beings one brotherhood, of which men are but the 
younger members. God’s intelligence guides them 
all; his love is the genial home-atmosphere wherein 
all virtues thrive, and all defect and sorrow is over- 
come. To recognize this relation and willingly and 
heartily to work toward its fulfilling is man’s highest 
privilege. This is his freedom, the liberty of sonship. 
In this commonwealth God’s will is not law but wish, 
because accepted gladly, and thus constraint has no 
place. 

The idea of God has come therefore to mean far 
more than Creator or Ruler. It is increasingly 
coming to mean Father, but not Father only but 
our Father zz heaven ,; that is, the common Father 
of all men and the one in whom all the highest ideals 
of moral excellence inhere. To this region above all 
change and time relations humanity looks, as furnish- 
ing the conditions in which what is imperfect shall 
attain its completeness. It is not to be imagined 
therefore as a vacant state into which no life nor 
activity enters, but, when once fully grasped as the 


140 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


world of consummation and fulfilment, it is seen to 
be a busy realm peopled with energies and influences 
that react most strenuously upon all earlier stages. 
In this timeless moral sphere the divine purposes are 
borne forward in the unbroken sequence which forms 
the continuity of human history. It is unto union 
with himself in this state that God is striving to 
bring man, leading him upward from every low and 
animal estate unto such likeness to divinity in the 
liberty of holy character as shall make him free with 
God’s own freedom. In the process of this moral 
education of the race all its aspirations after holiness, 
all its tendencies toward righteousness, all its endeav- 
ors to supplant the evil with the good, by whatever 
form of religion fostered, have been efficient factors. 
They have borne witness to the unshaken expectation 
by the human spirit of nobler things than it has yet 
attained, and the steady increase in power and defi- 
niteness, notwithstanding hindrances and failures, of 
these yearnings witness to the coworking in our 
spirits of that Father-spirit of the universe to bring 
us to himself. 

Of this great conflict all present-day contentions 
in the social and the political spheres are to be con- 
sidered part. There is in these activities the build- 
ing of the kingdom of God that shall consist of no 
dream-built towers and battlements in the ghostly 
twilight of a disembodied life, but shall be the sub- 
stantial habitation, at once eternal in the heavens 
and firmly planted upon the earth, of those whose 
labors, wrought into the spiritual progress of earthly 
men, are borne onward from generation to generation 
until completed in a redeemed society. The soul of 


IX THE COMMONWEALTH OF SPIRIT 141 


the present enthusiasm for humanity, and the hopeful 
facing of the grim problems which it uncovers, is this 
persuasion that God is in the field and is a sharer in 
all such endeavor, and that the work in which he 
shares is eternal. This is the great conviction and 
the final consummation; all else is detail and admin- 
istration. With the assurance of God’s cooperation 
with us we enter a new world. As the individual 
life is seen to be not determined in a few years of 
struggle and weakness, but to open outwardly into 
indefinitely wide relationships and interminably long 
activities, this world takes on a new meaning. It is 
seen to be not individual, but social; not the realm of 
human passions, but the range of the commonwealth 
of God. 


CHAPTER X 
HALLOWED BE THY NAME 


XXXIV. Man’s Approach to God through Personality 


THE idea of a universal fatherhood once realized, 
directly there springs up the filial desire for due 
honor to his name. If the first clause of this wonder- 
ful epitome of man’s aspiration is objective, looking 
upward and outward, the second is no less subjective 
and looks inward. Moreover, the descriptive phrase 
of the invocation, zwhzch art in heaven, is acknowledg- 
ment that the divine name — character — of itself is 
holy, while the first petition recognizes the essential 
need that man, as a child of God, should hallow his 
Father’s name in himself by becoming of like charac- 
ter. But holiness is freedom, and exists only in the 
free states of a holy person. As God’s being de- 
termines his revelation without moving cause outside 
of himself, so every man’s activities have their ground 
in his being and are determined in his personality. 
None but free volitions are moral, and no volition is 
free that does not originate within the being itself. 

Good exists only as the living states or activities of 
a good will. It is therefore evident that the attain- 
ment of personality is the precedent condition of all 
ethical and spiritual liberty. That essential self- 
hood, conscious and rational without dependence or 
limitation, which constitutes personality is perfectly 

142 


CHAP. X MAN’S APPROACH TO GOD 143 


actualized in God alone. Himself existing as a mani- 
festation of the personal God, man approaches the 
divine personality to the degree that he can overcome 
his finiteness and the bondage and impotence of his 
will in a realization of his own personality. The 
development of personality is a progressive trans- 
formation of brutish instinct and the fleeting volitions 
of the savage into the settled will and clear moral aim 
which brings man more into harmony with God, till 
he is free with God’s freedom. The attainment of 
this state is man’s continuous personal process of 
actualizing the spiritual potencies of his nature. 
There results a clearer apprehension of God through 
the growth of the perceptive powers by which the 
whole man goes forth to meet him. This vital 
relation with God fills us to the full with the bound- 
ing pulse of life. The influx of the spirit of God into 
our lean and vacant souls liberates them from the 
thraldom of pride, of baseness, of a thousand stings 
and solicitudes which cause intensest suffering. It 
replaces these corrosions and fretting cankers with 
the healing influences of communion with God. It 
creates a joy, an enlightening, an enthusiasm, anda 
power, which ever lift and swell the currents of the 
soul into nobler channels, and gives these deepened 
currents that stronger volume which marks the in- 
creasing ascendency of the higher nature and its con- 
tinuous approach to God in a growing fellowship of 
spirit. 

To prepare a heaven for man may be of love alone; 
to prepare man for heaven is of love, patience, and 
labor. For a long time theological thought, by its 
habit of regarding the factors of religious life as 


144 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


objective and external, has tended to obscure the 
educational character-building process of salvation. 
Perfect bliss means perfect holiness. All God’s deal- 
ings with men are disciplinary, having this distinct 
aim in view. Human life can no longer be imagined 
as a tempestuous sea upon which God sends forth 
the saving ark of a vicarious atonement in which 
certain chosen souls may be borne in safety to a land 
of rest. Human life is the true university. Here 
men are brought under the divine’ tutelage and led 
onward from the simplest rudiments by such experi- 
ences as are best calculated to call forth, exercise, 
and mature their separate faculties, graduating them 
at last into that higher curriculum for which this 
earthly existence is the preparatory school. 

Man is the child of God’s spirit, and true sonship 
consists in spiritual likeness to him. Physical son- 
ship can be given, but spiritual sonship must be 
achieved, and it can be wrought out only in the 
historic process of a moral conflict. The soul has 
been well described as a self-realizing purpose, but it 
can realize this purpose only in the struggle upward 
out of self toward a nobler ideal. Our redemption 
lies not in a restoration to the infancy and innocence 
of a lost Eden, but in developing the supremacy over 
sin that comes through replacing the lower nature 
with the higher. A race of holy spirits is impossible 
except as they attain to freedom from sin by van- 
quishing the antagonisms of every sort that enchain 
them. Holiness is won and peace assured only by 
the discipline that overcomes unholiness in all its 
motives and manifestations. History vindicates this 
conclusion, since it is the souls that have of necessity 


x MAN’S APPROACH TO GOD 145 


waged fiercest battle with sin whose triumph is most 
complete and whose peace is in consequence most 
undisturbed and calm. 

It is for chastening, then, that we endure, but no 
chastening is for the present joyous, but grievous. 
Every battle of the warrior is with confused noise 
and garments rolled in blood. Self-mastery is won 
only through crucifixion ; yet suffering is the chiefest 
of ministries known to the soul. Joys impregnate, 
says William Blake; sorrows bring forth. The 
deeper fountains send out their sweet and healing 
waters when the surface streams are dry. In Jesus 
of Nazareth this truth stands before us in all the 
moving lineaments of life. He was made perfect 
through sufferings, and, as the normal man, is in this 
educational feature, as in other things truly our repre- 
sentative, embodying what we are and what we are 
to become. Our part in acquiring the culture and 
qualities of sons is not passive, but requires that we 
actively imitate that typical Son in order to grow 
into his likeness. 

Whenever God succeeds in developing man unto a 
perfect sonship, he, at the same time, perfectly mani- 
fests his own fatherhood. He interprets himself to 
us through our needs far more than through our ful- 
ness. The higher spiritual nature of man is best 
developed through the divine discipline which draws 
the sufferer close to God. The old Greeks sald, 
“The gods sell us the blessings they bestow,” and 
modern life has learned that only from the furrows 
of pain spring the peaceable fruits of righteousness. 
Men have ever been lifted into their best living 


through pressure and need. God can give himself 
L 


146 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


only to the consciousness of want. Love can never 
be more than imperfectly revealed otherwise than 
through sympathy, which is of suffering. This is 
the key to the dark enigma of pain and suffering in 
the world. They are the avenues along which God 
comes to man. We might gladly exchange all other 
gifts for the infinite boon of sorrow; since our ca- 
pacity for suffering measures our capacity for God. 
How the mysterious alchemy of sympathy can trans- 
mute the pain of self-denial, of loss, of lack, into the 
unspeakable joy and compensation of the divine fel- 
lowship, only those who have felt it can understand ; 
but they do know that through the atmosphere 
cleared by scathing dolor more purely and distinctly 
do we see God. / Not in the day, but in the night- 
time do the fadeless stars in their far distant bril- 
liancy shine, and in sorrow we pass beyond the glare 
of earth’s prosperity, and feel ourselves natives of 
eternity and children of God, and his smile is felt 
to recompense all the ills of life. 

If God would have us inherit the promise fully, 
and grow up in perfect possession of our heritage 
from himself, he could not omit any part of that 
fatherly discipline in which he dealeth with us as 
with sons. It is to help us to understand the mean- 
ing of our sonship that he keeps us so long in the 
school of affliction. How otherwise shall we learn 
how strong and restful are the everlasting arms 
beneath us except by sinking into them for support ; 
how shall we experience the tenderness of the infinite 
love except as we lean exhausted upon its bosom; 
how shall we know the Father of mercies except 
through consciousness of the unmerited mercy of 


x MAN’S APPROACH TO GOD 147 


him who forgiveth our iniquities and healeth all our 
diseases ; how shall we receive the God of all comfort 
except as we ourselves are comforted of God? 

The richest and worthiest acquaintance with God 
is mediated by the bread of sorrow and the cup of 
bitterness, As was Christ’s, so our way in this 
school of obedience is a Via Dolorosa, perchance 
with Calvary at the farther end But we cannot, 
as he could not, spare that element of suffering out 
of our life without deterioration and loss. This pain- 
ful discipline, the fruit of the fidelity of God, tolerates 
no defect, but searches out and strengthens every 
separate faculty till it sets each son free from vice 
and limitations, and rounds him into that whole- 
ness of manhood which is holiness. Under this 
divine tuition, there is a continuous growth in the 
soul through which it approaches nearer and still 
nearer to God. As man’s own personality enlarges 
and grows free and clear, God becomes more intelli- 
gible, more personal, more companionable to him in 
the unity of spiritual contact and sympathetic life. 
God and man have now a common purpose, and all 
their movements and relations are harmonious. 
From this sense of oneness there is begotten a 
confidence which enables us in the full maturity of 
our freedom, through full realization of our sonship, 
to say always, Even so, Father, for so it seemed good 
in thy sight. 

The first result of growth in personality is in- 
crease of freedom. The idea of freedom is often 
obscured by confounding two radically different quali- 
ties. The problem at which the Stoics wrought so 
laboriously, and which still persists at the base of 


148 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


philosophical and theological thinking, is the purely 
psychological question as to man’s liberty in decision 
between motives. From this point of view man is 
free, if his actions are not predetermined by a 
superior authority. Entirely distinct, however, from 
this metaphysical speculation is the inquiry into the 
nature and process of a practical ethical freedom. 
This emancipation must be wrought. out by the 
individual soul in the activities and successive judg- 
ments of life. Will in operation is more than volition ; 
it is the soul willing. It is not the simple exercise 
of choice, but the movement of the entire nature, 
the ground of volition, in the direction of its inner 
preferences. Beyond the circle of these one’s will 
cannot range. The sinful man is not free — fe that 
committeth sin ts the bond slave of sin. The lower 
down the moral scale we go, the less liberty we find. 
Ethical freedom is not a natural ability to choose the 
right, but the acquired power to will it; it is the un- 
folding into experience of that inner and true man- 
hood which, hitherto, has been subject to bondage 
through predominance of the lower nature and alien- 
ation of the will from God. Man’s salvation is com- 
plete when his will is fully accordant with the divine 
will. A profoundly suggestive truth finds utterance 
in St. Bernard’s “ Let self-will once cease and there 
will be no hell,” — Cesset voluntas propria et infernus 
non ertt. 

Ordinarily the energies of men in social and busi- 
ness activities go with the lower faculties. Through 
contact with God in some form there comes an 
awakening which arouses the higher and nobler 
powers. Even among the lower ends of life, ends 


x MAN’S APPROACH TO GOD 149 


which move upon the plane of daily affairs in social 
and political and industrial relations, there is found 
room for the play and development of all that is 
worthiest in man, and these become a summons to 
larger moods and more open soul. Imagination, 
responsiveness to the ideal, hope, vision of the invisi- 
ble, realization of the ever-present God, —all these the 
Spirit gives in liberating men from limitations aris- 
ing from absorption in material things. The same 
process is discernible in the enlarging of the mental 
faculties which results from enthroning spirit above 
sense, for he that is enslaved by his senses is sense- 
bound in his thought. When this emancipation has 
proceeded far enough inward to reach the centre of 
being and unclasp the clinging tendrils of thought, 
affection, and will from the trunk of self, man be- 
comes free from law, from penalty, from sin, in the 
process of passing gradually by self-surrender into 
the oneness of mind and heart with God which Jesus 
exemplifies, — the glorious liberty of the sons of God. 

True freedom, then, is not merely the power of 
choice between right and wrong, the poor liberty of 
the scale beam, which really is necessity, to yield 
to the weightier motive, but it is the determination of 
the will toward righteousness. It is not liberty to do 
as one will, the simple absence of restraint, but it is 
the power to live and act according to one’s higher 
nature. Only that will is free whose centre of gravity 
falls within itself. ‘The free life is the strong life that 
commands itself and does not yield to external cir- 
cumstances nor to internal weakness., The realiza- 
tion of freedom is not in the metaphysical field, but 
in the field of actual attainment. It exhibits a true 


150 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


progress in its course, and results from man’s disci- 
pline in the divine order established for him in this 
world. In this way only is character developed. 
‘Even the gods envy him whose senses, like horses 
well broken in by the driver, have been subdued, who 
is free from pride and free from appetites.” In such 
language as this, Hindoo seers anticipated the Stoa 
in teaching that control of the reason by the passions 
is the chief evil-and their overcoming the chief good. 
The realization of freedom is a progressive sanctifi- 
cation of the soul in continuation of the holy self- 
determination which begins from its first turning 
toward God, and is established and completed in 
the manifestation of sonship to him. 

The history of the development of personality 
is the history of humanity. Struggle for self- 
realization is natural to man. It forms the basis of 
the profoundest works of literature and art. The 
power and clearness with which a people is able to 
seize upon and work out this problem is the measure 
of their progress. This, more than any other one 
thing, differentiates the Orient from the Occident 
and gives the palm of precedence to the latter. The 
universal apotheosis of the great man, the ever- 
prevalent tendency to hero-worship, is a projection 
of the impulse in every heart to aspire to better and 
diviner things than is yet attained. In supplying 
this profound and comprehensive want of the human 
soul, Jesus of Nazareth enters most potently as an 
impelling force and a norm of character into the — 
world’s history. In him freedom has attained to 
sinlessness ; personality reached the consciousness 
of perfect unity with God. He attained this spirit- 


= MAN’S INSPIRATION THROUGH COMMUNION 151 


ual altitudé by overcoming in that ethical conflict 
through which all souls must pass, and thus showed 
that man’s redemption is the attainment of righteous- 
ness. In him was life, not existence merely, but 
existence attaining its end. The happiness and holi- 
ness of a perfect life in normal relation to its source 
here found expression and embodiment. Life, natu- 
ral life, earthly life, all the phenomena and accidents 
of a conscious existence upon this mundane sphere 
had been known and felt, but the full significance, 
the high privileges, the sublime possibilities to which 
every human soul is a potential heir, these were first 
brought fully to light in him. And this glorious 
unfolding of the perfect life was the light of men, 
an unfading star to guide them to their journey’s 
end. Sanctification of the entire life, though grad- 
ual, finally results in such comfort and power as are 
the fruits of walking not after the flesh but after the 
spirit. When this course is accomplished, and the 
soul is perfectly freed from the limitations which 
environ and dwarf it, the true personality of man is 
realized. That point once reached, communion with 
God becomes the continuous activity of the soul. 


XXXV. Man’s Inspiration through Communion with 
— God 

Our consciousness of self is the condition and 
measure of our knowledge of God. The ascending 
sap gives form and substance to the tree, and is it- 
self manifested and made permanent in trunk, and 
branch, and leaf; so, by its energizing, the eternal 
mind both produces the human mind and is special- 
ized in individual men, and thus God’s manifestation 


152 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


of himself in humanity is progressive. Religion has a 
history, for the reason that it is the exercise in human 
nature of that spiritual quality akin to God, whereby 
they two become increasingly ensphered within each 
other in the unfolding of personal relations. Only be- 
cause God is like to man can man be inspired of him. 
Inasmuch as the development of this God-likeness 
is gradual, the world’s debate over the boundaries 
and kinds of inspiration is invalid. Since the uni- 
verse of beings is the explication of the being of God, 
human nature and divine nature are essentially one. 
We will bring our theology into harmony with nature 
— merely another name for God’s forth-putting of him- 
self —and with science, which is no more than the 
observed method of nature, only by the recognition 
that in man’s spiritual activities we see emerging into 
human history, in forms that we can grasp and com- 
prehend, those deep-lying forces and principles which 
from eternity have determined the progress of the 
world. God is not honored in being regarded as un- 
intelligible, for he is the primal Reason which gives 
substance and coherence throughout to the reason 
of men. Some things, inexplicable, as yet, and per- 
haps ever, to the finite mind there must of necessity 
be, but only as the congruous though unseen foun- 
dations upon which rests what is experienced and 
known. It must necessarily be more completely true 
of God than we find it to be true of ourselves, that 
much of what is best and most fruitful in our lives 
always and inevitably remains purely subjective ex- 
perience, realized in us only in the form of incom- 
municable emotions, which yet far transcend in worth 
and influence all that may be expressed or shared. 


x MAN’S INSPIRATION THROUGH COMMUNION 153 


The revelation of God is a living thing, having its 
beginnings, its growth, and its maturer forms. The 
divine mind can quicken, modify, pass into, the mind 
of man, only in an historic process which moves 
through the successive stages of dawning apprehen- 
sion, increased knowledge, willing conformity, and 
realized oneness. It is no derogation of the highest 
examples of inspiration, therefore, to say that they 
are the topmost branch of that fruitful vine which, 
rooted in the infinite wisdom of God, grows up 
through the activities of men, —their ploughing and 
reaping, and fashioning of iron, wood, and clay ; 
through their intellectual processes, —their litera- 
ture, their art, their architecture ; through their emo- 
tional outpourings,—their ‘Creations’ and their 
“Messiahs’’; through their ethical convictions, 
their laws, and their government; and blooms into 
the lofty spiritual apprehensions of Isaiah and Paul, 
and the calm companionship of the Christ with God. 
These inspirations differ in degree, but spring from 
a common source. 

As our acquaintance with the real thoughts and 
feelings that have moved men increases through 
careful study of ethnology, and we learn to interpret 
their folk-lore, their rites, and their religious utter- 
ances with a more sympathetic intelligence, we can- 
not doubt that the spirit of God has been struggling 
to birth in them all, even in the lowest and most 
leaden-eared. As we come to think of God no longer 
_ as outside but in humanity, we see that this communi- 
cation from the eternal spirit, which is named inspi- 
ration, is not simply an in-spiring but an in-spiriting — 
that God is not breathing suggestions into men from 


154 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


without, but declaring himself within, as the growth 
of the palm pushes up from the heart outward. We 
shall soon cease to insist that Christianity is the 
only revelation, however strongly we may emphasize 
its superior fulness and life-hallowing power, —and 
doubtless the more thoroughly we compare it with 
all others the more its supremacy appears, — but we 
shall recognize in the longings, the self-condemnings, 
the aspirations, of all the races, the stirrings of a 
divine energy and an attempt on their part to gather 
themselves into a unity with God in response to his 
call and to overcome their spiritual defect through 
communion with him. How else can we account for 
the Hindoo philosophy’s penetration into the course 
of sin, as expressed in the Bhagavat Gita, ‘“ Repeated 
sin impairs the judgment, he whose judgment is 
impaired sins repeatedly”; or the noble aim of the 
- Buddhist faith, “ Not to commit any sin, to do good, 
and to purify one’s mind”; or the lofty spiritual 
creed of the Parsees, “To fear God, to live a life of 
pure thoughts, pure words, pure deeds, and to die in 
the hope of a world to come”? Such glimpses into 
the loftier teachings of all the great creeds verify 
Paul’s assertion, that the nations which have not the 
law of Moses still do by nature, through the prompt- 
ings of their own constitution, those things com- 
manded in the Law. Is not this because the God 
who spake to Moses spake also to Buddha, Zoroaster, 
Confucius, and Socrates? True, these precepts run 


far beyond the lives of the peoples from the midst. 


of whom they spring; but when did ever the practice 
of the multitude attain the level of the vision of its 
seers? 


is — 


x MAN’S INSPIRATION THROUGH COMMUNION | 155 


Inspiration is the continuous expansion of man’s 
spiritual nature in fellowship with God, everywhere 
and in all men. So long, therefore, as man has a 
living God his inspiration will not be a memory, but 
a present power. It is the increasing disclosure of 
the life of the spirit, at once a life of righteousness 
and of freedom, by which the low are constantly 
exalted and the high made higher still. In the pres- 
ent, indwelling, and ever-energizing God the hope of 
humanity rests. The successive generations, guided 
and nurtured by his spirit, have pressed further tow- 
ard the mark.  A\ll the races, as well as all the ages, 
have their definite parts assigned them in this divine 
drama. While Christianity, so far, has played the 
leading réle, there will still be much added to its 
comprehensiveness and power when, by its assist- 
ance, the Mongol, the Tartar, and the African shall 
realize their personality as have the Hun and the 
Visigoth. When the still pagan nations shall bring 
their special aptitudes and characteristics, to lay 
them as offerings at the feet of the Centre of Chris- 
tianity, each will find its own ideal in him who, by 
virtue of his perfect manhood, is able to manifest God 
equally to all races, and it will in turn contribute 
its own particular race-characteristics to that complete 
incarnation of God in humanity for which Christian- 
ity stands. 

Though the spiritualization of all men everywhere 
goes steadily forward, there is room inside the gen- 
eral process for this inspiration to be most perfectly 
manifested in the best. Few will deny that the 
Hebrew prophets and the Christian apostles beheld 
with clearer vision and set forth in. steadier and 


156 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. | 


plainer terms the presence and character of God 
than are elsewhere to be found. Above them all, 
however, stands Jesus of Nazareth representing that 
ideal for humanity which shall be realized when God 
dwells in all men as he dwelt in him. In him also 
were embodied most fully those two lines of activity 
by which especially this inspiration of man is fur- 
thered, — faith and prayer. 

It is impossible to include all the relations of God 
to man in terms of the intellect. Man is more than 
intellect, hence something more than rationalistic 
equipment is demanded for a perfect knowledge of 
God. Faith is the common name for supersensual 
vision. Faith is the outreaching of the human 
soul in eager sympathy toward the divine life and 
likeness. It is the surrender of the whole man 
to the control of God in a close and sympathetic 
fellowship which carries him completely off his own 
centre to rest upon God alone. There is no special 
faith-faculty, by which to know God or to interpret 
his message, except the listening attitude of the soul, 
which renders it obedient to the dictates of those 
higher faculties to which God most clearly speaks. 
But by the realization which it gives to spiritual 
things, faith is justly said to be the substance, or the 
substantiator, of things not seen. It has the power, 
through closeness of relation with God, of throwing 
forth into objective reality and evidence those spirit- 
ual verities which, while hoped for, are yet to the 
organs of sense invisible. The life of faith, therefore, 
is not a life of easy acquiescence. It is a great war- 
fare which the faithful has to wage; it is a great 
victory which he may achieve. It was through this 


x MAN’S INSPIRATION THROUGH COMMUNION 157 


alliance with God that the Christ was enabled to say: 
I do always those things that are pleasing to him. 
Not different is the conflict for every man. /It is a 
great victory to keep the heart pure, the hands clean, 
and communion with God unbroken. 

Out of such gradual apprehension of God grows 
that highest form of communion with him which we 
call prayer. There is talk of “Natural Law,” as if 
that were something which made prayer useless and 
unreasonable. Prayer itself is a natural law. The 
natural law before which a faithless science stands 
dumb is the plexus of material earthly forces; but 
prayer is a cosmic force, finding its source in God 
himself. His will is manifested in man’s will; and 
that impulse which on its human side is petition may 
easily be, on the divine side, the answer thereto, 
since every finite change is a modification of the 
entire Infinite. Prayer is taking hold of God’s will- 
ingness and giving him the leverage upon our lives 
that he desires. ‘As royal prophet and as royal 
priest, Jesus,” says Ritschl, “is mediator of the 
highest conceivable communion between God and 
man.” And he it is that most fully, both by precept 
and example, has taught us to pray. As he replen- 
ished his soul by frequent nightly vigils in company 
with the Hearer of prayer, so may his brethren come 
to the same Source and there find that they have 
come to their best selves and reached their highest 
manhood. In hallowing the Father’s name, the 
children themselves grow holy and are able to talk 
with God face to face, as a man talketh with his 
friend —and what they hear that they can _ repeat. 
Thus springs up a literature of the spirit. 


158 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


XXXVI. The Bible a Reflection of God’s Communion 
with Men 


The religious literature of the race grows out of 
its consciousness of God’s coworking. The world’s 
sacred Scriptures have swelled and guided the reli- 
gious current: they are not its original fountain. As 
we realize how closely akin the races are, and how 
deep and divine has been much of the insight and 
experience of those but recently considered outside 
the pale of revelation, we are learning that the spirit 
of God has had all times and all men as the field of 
his operations, and that it is not here and there an 
individual, but the human race that has been inspired. 
Consciousness of this presence of God has found 
expression among every people in a literature revered 
as the utterance of that overshadowing intelligence 
which in shaping man’s spiritual life gave true signifi- 
cance and direction to human history. Externally, 
these records purport to give an account of those 
successive acts of the creative energy by which the 
things that are have come to be, and of the moral 
discipline by which an imperfect humanity is to be 
transformed, and a life of strife and deficiency enabled 
to pass into a state in which earthly hopes and 
aspirations shall be realized. These observations and 
feelings have been common to mankind. Naturally, 
therefore, the cosmogonies, the ideals of conduct, the 
expectations of retribution and reward, have a marked 
similarity wherever found. While this is partially 
accounted for by the close relationships and admixt- 
ures of prehistoric races, it is still more directly due 
to the fact that in these conceptions we have the 


x GOD’S COMMUNION WITH MEN 159 


manifestation of God in a common human nature. 
The essential point to notice, however, is that all 
these books, whatever may be claimed for them in 
the way of revelation, are in reality a history of the 
religious life of the race, and as such progressive 
both in character and content. 

To the Hebrews must be granted supremacy in 
this regard. From them has come the clearest recog- 
nition and expression of God’s presence and activity 
in human affairs, and this is not less but rather more 
true because the Jew’s religion was so intimately 
bound up with his political and social life. His 
Jehovah was a God of history who, using all nature 
as the footstool of his feet, found the realm of his 
government and providential care in the moral sphere 
of the training and well-being of his chosen people. 
This sense of an ever-present and watchful Ruler 
gives the high ethical element in the religion of Israel 
which characterizes it among the ethnic faiths. The 
freshness and value which the Hebrew Scriptures, 
even the earliest, have for modern life are due to the 
vigor with which they lay hold upon the conviction 
that God is working within the nation, bearing with 
men’s ignorance and low ideals, impressing his char- 
acter and will upon them by symbols and methods 
suited to their condition, and thereby raising them 
steadily nearer to himself. Adopting, and transfus- 
ing with a worthier morality, the common stock of 
traditions and primitive philosophy by which human- 
ity had sought to account for the origin of things and 
the observed state of man, the Jewish writers pro- 
ceeded to rear upon this foundation the noble edifice 
of their national history considered from the point 


160 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


of view of a people peculiarly under the guidance of 
God. 

There is much more, however, in a people’s life 
than can be set forth in genealogical tables, succes- 
sions of kings, and the chronicling of visible and 
outward events. The true life is the inner life. This 
is what the Hebrew Scriptures specially describe, 
and those portions which are perennially valuable, 
the vehicles of a true revelation, are those which 
express the throbbings of the mighty heart of this 
people, great in their insight into spiritual relations 
and often sublime in their moral standards. These 
things are not a revelation external to man, but a 
disclosure of the soul’s response to God in the crises 
of life. They are the flowering forth of the divinity 
in the soul, the God-consciousness of humanity. _ No 
communication from God could avail except such as 
man is by nature fitted to receive. Necessarily, 
therefore, God’s declaration of himself has been pro- 
gressive. He has spoken to men in the measure 
wherewith they were able to mete, and still he has 
ever had many things to say that they could not yet 
bear. 

The Bible records the gradual revelation of God in 
man, and the progressive unfolding of man’s know- 
ledge of God and apprehension of spiritual things. 
It is a subjective experience in which God and man 
are inextricably mingled. It is sacred to man because 
it embodies man’s truest communings with God. It 
is divine in that it grows out of those impulses and 
guidings of God which fashion the soul into his like- 
ness ; itis human in that it fixes in visible form those 
fleeting moods, emotions, and ecstasies wherein the 


x GOD’S COMMUNION WITH MEN 161 


soul enjoys fellowship with God. The stern realities 
of existence have laid hold at times of the pillars of 
life, and shaken the fabric to its centre. Out of their 
terror and dismay men have cried unto God and he 
has heard them. The voicing of their joy, of their 
sorrows, their doubts, their penitence, their gratitude, 
make up the life-bearing portion of the Bible. Great 
souls, with outlook and insight comprehensive enough 
to grasp their significance, have interpreted with clear 
vision in luminous words those birth-throes of new 
understanding and richer expérience that have given 
rise to the doctrines and beliefs which they have thus 
formulated. These truths, because they have been 
once lived, remain evermore the beacon and chart of 
the living. 

The greatest difficulty that the Church finds in 
shifting its understanding of the source of Scripture 
from an objective word of God to a subjective response 
of man’s spirit to the divine revelation, lies in the fact 
that every soul, conscious of its own weakness, longs 
for some external rule of life upon which to lean. 
Precept is always more sought than principle. Just 
this sense of rest and ease to be found in the in- 
fallible authority of a divine command has given 
vitality to the various theories of inspiration to which 
the Church so convulsively clings. We are learning, 
however, that there can be no sanction outside the 
soul itself, since that only is ethical in action to 
which the man willingly assents. No law nor book 
nor custom has binding power further than it com- 
mends itself to the conscience as right. An in- 
fallible authority, therefore, will necessarily continue 


impossible so long as its criterion is not infallible. 
M 


162... THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


Man grows as God is more fully manifested in him, 
and that which is imperative to-day will be replaced 
to-morrow by a different, even though a worthier, 
motive. 

Yet the Bible is put forth, and justly, as the word 
of God to man; for if God has not spoken in those 
experiences of faith, and hope, and patience, and 
purity, and love, he has not spoken to men at all. If 
these lessons, regarded not as an external revelation, 
but as wrought out in subjective attainment by men 
of like passions with ourselves, do not convey the 
evidence and authority of a divine inspiration, there 
is no way in which such inspiration may be realized. 
The authority of the Bible, arising from the power of 
its contents to call forth the highest spiritual qualities 
.and satisfy the deepest longings of human nature, 
derives great advantage from a view which, ceasing to 
regard it as a dogmatic revelation, cherishes it as con- 
taining above all other literature a record of human 
souls in their closest contact with God. If the chasm 
seems wide that yawns between the noblest portions 
of this ancient Book and modern life, a ready explana- 
tion is at hand in the fact that the ideal of lofty spirits 
here finds voice, while the multitude, slower of heart 
and duller of vision, have lagged far behind in its 
realization. 

The fear that removing the seat of authority from 
the Bible itself, as the objective norm and content of 
divine revelation, to confer it upon the moral con- 
sciousness of humanity, will loosen altogether its con- 
straining power, is seen to be groundless in view of 
the fact that this implies nothing more than has all 
along been involved in the asserted right of private 


x GOD’S COMMUNION WITH MEN 163 


interpretation of the universal rule. This new view- 
point only makes specific application of that gen- 
eral change of position which no longer sees God 
controlling man from without, but developing him 
from within. The sternest test to which any prin- 
ciple can be subjected is the judgment of life, and 
it has been abundantly shown that Christian char- 
acter is developed, the conscience made sensitive, 
the will directed, and the spiritual ideal exalted by 
the Scriptures used in this way. “I have been 
solemnly impressed,” wrote Frederic D. Maurice to 
Charles Kingsley, “ with the truth that the Bible as a 
means of attaining to the knowledge of the living 
God is precious beyond all expression or conception ; 
when made a substitute for that knowledge it may 
become a greater deadener to the human spirit than 
all other books.” If the Scriptures infallibly bring 
the docile and honest seeker after truth into the pres- 
ence and power of the Most High, their infallibility 
is sufficiently demonstrated. They are the only rule, 
because they are the highest rule, of faith and prac- 
tice in religious things; and exercise the right of 
the highest known moral standard, to convince the 
reason and bind the conscience. 

The human consciousness, however, to which the 
ultimate appeal is to be made, is that of humanity at 
its highest. By perfect realization of human person- 
ality in himself, Jesus Christ became and remains 
representative Man, and his consciousness is the typi- 
cal consciousness to which others progressively attain 
in varying degrees. What God was to him, is what 
he is to become to us. All his teachings spring 
directly from his conscious relations to God, and are 


164 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


to be interpreted by his character as developed in 
those relations. Because he is the highest conceiv- 
able type of man, he is the fullest manifestation of 
God, and is, therefore, the supreme authority not only 
in Scripture, but in that human life from which the 
Scriptures sprung. 

Recognizing these Scriptures as the product of the 
literary activity and historic life of Israel removes very 
many difficulties. We can thus trace the gradual as- 
cent of moral ideas from the low standards and crudi- 
ties of primitive days. The early writers could not 
announce a vision that they had not seen. The pro- 
gressiveness of the record accounts for the grotesque 
and naive stories of a people’s childhood, without bur- 
dening our faith with a belief in them as historical 
facts, or subjecting us to the strain of quibble and eva- 
sion in.a fruitless endeavor to make them credible to 
an intellectual age. A firm grasp upon the idea that 
one God is revealed, and one continuous and consist- 
ent purpose unfolded through all ages and dispensa- 
tions, at once puts to rest all alarm at the growing 
belief in the greater antiquity of man. What differ- 
ence whether his age be six thousand or sixty thou- 
sand years? The Bible, considered as a record of 
a disciplinary process, will be allowed to omit mention 
of sundry links necessary to a perfect chronology with- 
out despite to its veracity as revelation. 

The same principles of interpretation will apply to 
the New Testament as to the Old. By the same rea- 
soning, which in other departments of learning teach 
us that creation is still going on, we are forced to 
believe that history is still living before our eyes. 
Wherefore the accounts in these sacred documents 


a 


x THE CREED A REPORT OF PROGRESS 165 


are to be interpreted by the same canons and sub- 
jected to the same test with which we judge the events 
of to-day. Many recorded miracles and predictions 
will cease to perplex the thoughtful student as he re- 
members under what conditions these records were 
made. Other events which contravene the known 
method of God’s working in similar fields may for a 
time longer remain open questions without prejudice 
to the spiritual helpfulness of the general message in 
which they are enshrined. To one who holds the 
grander modern view of a present God, ever living | 
and ever manifesting himself in all the terms of uni- 
versal being, it is matter of sublimest indifference 
whether those things which transcend God’s usual 
method in the psychological and physiological realms 
occurred as recorded or not. With the demonstration 
of the scope and purpose of God’s progressive mani- 
festation in man, which the person and life of Jesus 
Christ affords, all previous views of method and of 
record may be changed without impairing the vitality 
of faith, because leaving unbroken our consciousness 
of sonship. 


XXXVII. The Creed a Report of Progress 


The phenomena of creed-making represent the ac- 
tivity in post-Biblical times of the same principle by 
which the Scriptures were fashioned. Creeds have 
been the outgrowth of irresistible desire to gather up 
and hold in systematic form the results of knowledge 
and experience in the life of the spirit. Fed by 
the heavenly manna of the sacred oracles, the early 
Christian Church felt strong enough to assimilate and 
subject to the headship of Christ not only the social 


166 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


forms and political organization of the ancient world, 
but its philosophy as well. At each new stage of its 
advance the Church has set up a new creed —a doc- 
trinal Ebenezer — for a witness that thereto the Lord 
had helped her. 

So far as these formule are used for the purpose 
of giving clearness to intellectual apprehension, and 
to show the proportionate spiritual attainment reached 
in the religious thought and life of the age, they are 
valuable. Resulting as they do from that subjective 
process in which each epoch revivifies the essential ele- 
ments of the past, they are in truth what Dorner calls 
them, “The precipitate of the religious consciousness 
of mighty men and times.” When used, as they too 
often have been, as instruments of ecclesiastical tyr- 
anny, they become hindrances in the way of the very 
progress which brought them into being, and, instead 
of the rallying-point about which all devout hearts can 
gather upon the great fundamental facts of the reli- 
gious life, they are made the symbols of party strife 
and divide the spiritual host into hostile camps. 

This is the danger which besets all attempts to set 
forth in logical terms so subtle and pervasive and vari- 
able a principle as life. Lord Russell’s objection to the 
codification of international law is particularly appli- 
cable to the endeavor to systematize in final form the 
findings of the human spirit. “International law,” 
said he, “is in a state of growth and transition. To 
codify it would be to crystallize it; uncodified it is 
more flexible, and more easily assimilates new rules.” 
With the acceptance of the idea that continual srowth 
inseparably accompanies God’s manifestation in men, 
it will be seen that the spiritual life of humanity is 


x THE CREED A REPORT OF PROGRESS 167 


too wide and free to be cast into stereotyped forms. 
To attempt this is to defeat the very object in view. 
Faith is helped more by emphasis upon the broad and 
demonstrable relations of God with man. To limit 
belief by authority is to congeal the flowing currents 
of spiritual apprehension and set men to looking back- 
ward for truth and evidence of God. Religion con- 
sists not in tenaciously holding to forms of sound 
words, but in personal wrestling with the great spirit- 
ual problems wherein each soul finds its way to God. 

There is need of applying to the ancient creeds 
that principle which interprets the Scriptures histori- 
cally, and thus simplifies them at the same time that 
it brings their noblest qualities into highest relief. 
The creeds of Christendom, as well as those of man- 
kind at large, have embodied with their valuable 
features much that was local and temporal to the 
times and places wherein they were written and which, 
in consequence, is now wholly outgrown. A change 
in the point of view has rendered obsolete many of 
the doctrines which once were of the very essence of 
men’s faith. The fashion of belief passes away. A 
mature Christianity will recognize the excesses and 
deficiencies of all the historic symbols, and when it 
shapes a creed for present use it will do so knowing 
that it waxes old even while being written, and that 
the living spirit of man in attaining to an ever closer 
communion with God will leave behind him these 
milestones of his progress. 


CHAPTER XI 
THY KINGDOM COME 


XXXVIII. The Kingdom of the Father in its Mani- 
festation 


THE being of God determines his manifestation. 
Essential unity unfolds into organized unity. This 
unity gives orderly sequence to the universe of things ; 
it also abides in human history as its directive law. 
It was reserved for modern speculation to connect 
and complete the Greek teleology of nature and ‘the 
medizeval teleology of history in its conception of 
nature and history as one progressive manifestation 
of God. In the unfolding of the divine unity is dis- 
cerned the constructive principle which builds up the 
organic in nature and produces the social forms of 
humanity. 

God himself, as exhibiting that balanced unity of 
personal qualities which constitutes personality, will 
necessarily reach his most perfect manifestation in 
the personality of those deriving their being from 
him, and the relations and institutions which arise in 
the course of history are produced, as Herder taught, 
by the gradually developing constitution of man. 
The ultimate factor in history is the individual. He 
alone is conscious of responsibility, and through 
obedience to the promptings of his higher nature 
develops into a person; but complete personality can 

168 


CHAP. XI THE KINGDOM OF THE FATHER 169 


be realized only in the relationships of social life. 
While it is true that the individual exists as an end 
unto himself, not simply as the means by which 
society is constituted, yet each is what he is as an 
individual because he is part of a race. He becomes 
truly man only in association with his fellow-men. 
Naturaliter ergo, said old A®gidius of Venice, homo 
est animal soctabile. The personal and social ideals 
are not antagonistic ; they are complementary. How- 
ever primitive the forms of human life, the self is 
still deeply affected by its relations with others. While 
the needs of the individual furnish the motive power 
in society, it is no less true that society determines 
the grooves in which mainly the individual’s energies 
shall run. To realize himself, therefore, a man must 
be conscious of his inclusion in a greater whole. 
Society is the condition of man’s development as a 
person ; and society, in turn, both results from, and 
furnishes the field for, the individual’s development. 
In the social and political institutions of men God 
reveals himself as order. As their mutual relation- 
ships result from the unity of God, so the increasing 
effects of that unity are seen in the successive mani- 
festations of order in the civil and social world. That 
which, as society, is ill-defined and unformed, attains 
to definiteness and unity in-the state. The customs 
and rules which controlled the primitive clan become 
transformed into definite enactments and principles 
of political action. An earlier type of thought repre- 
sented this closer organization of humanity as taking 
place voluntarily, a conscious subordination of minor 
individual to general interests for the sake of greater 
individual advantages resulting. There is, however, 


170 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


no such “state of nature” as this theory supposes 
men to have deliberately surrendered in order to enter 
into society. Interdependence begins very low down 
the scale and becomes more complex with the ascent 
of man. Many animal species display foregleams of 
social capacities and relations which waited only for 
that personal element attained in the human to be- 
come the full-fledged nation of to-day, and to be. 
capable also of developing into that of the prophet’s 
dream. The state is not constituted in a surrender 
of personal rights, but arises in the process of their 
realization. Only as a member of this organic whole 
does the citizen become endowed with either rights 
or duties. His rights pertain to him as an integral 
portion of this greater unity, his larger self, with 
which he is identified. His responsibilities, and the 
realization of his highest possibilities also, necessarily 
inhere in reciprocal obligations. 

Law is the vital principle of society. So much of 
truth was contained in the “social contract”’ theory, 
that it exalted will above both force and chance as the 
origin of the state; it erred in imagining this to be 
man’s will instead of God’s. In the recognition of 
civic life as the gradual expanding of the political 
elements in man’s constitution, it becomes clear that 
the state originates from a further explication of the 
being of God. The law, then, by which humanity in 
its different political institutions is governed is the 
unfolding will of the universal Father. Authority | 
inheres in him as the primal source of all being. The 
powers of government are derived not from the con- 
sent of the governed, but from their identity with 
this basal authority of God. The science of govern- 


XI THE KINGDOM OF THE FATHER 171 


ment consists in discovering the original principles 
and applying them to passing conditions in such a 
Way as to give the efficacy of objective reality, in 
specific statutes and regulations, to this hidden, 
spiritual law. Only as realizing its origin and end in 
God, by shaping into its political and social forms 
those moral ideals which tend to perfect the manhood 
of its members, does the state vindicate itself as 
actively constructive of rights and duties. The gTOw- 
ing conviction, that God does not govern arbitrarily 
but with a self-imposed regard to the interests of all 
his subjects, is reflected in the democratic principle 
which sees not only in the institutions of society and 
state and family the larger embodiment of man him- 
self, but also a more than human sacredness as 
manifesting and furthering the divine method and 
purpose. 

The limitation of faculties which necessitates our 
treatment of contemporaneous conditions as though 
they were successive is a serious hindrance to a clear 
understanding of human life. Among these institu- 
tions, founded not upon voluntary contract, but upon 
personal relationships, in which the kingdom of the 
Father is manifested, the family is at once earliest 
and last. Itself the unitary form of society, the 
family affords the sphere in which the most rudi- 
mentary social instincts find expression; it persists 
through all stages of social advance, not as the germ 
from which either church or nation springs, but the 
firmest support of each and the object of their com- 
mon care; it attains to its perfection in proportion 
as its constituent factors acquire fulness of personal 
development, and is so vitally influential upon the 


172 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


character of its members that the perfect family and 
the perfect individual shall reach their final earthly 
stage together. 

In the treatment of sociological and political prob- 
lems, the family has received too little attention. 
On the one hand, its fortunes wax or wane with the 
conditions which prevail in society; on the other, 
the ideals which it enshrines and the characters 
which it develops determine the standing or falling 
of all other institutions. Far too generally the whole 
of the family, in the view of both church and state, 
has been absorbed in the one who stood at its head. 
There is in the family a corporate unity which makes 
it greater than any single member and more impor- 
tant than all separately considered. It is constituted 
in the commonwealth of affections. Mazzini calls it 
“the heart’s Fatherland.” In the family more per- 
fectly than in any other social form are comprehended 
the relations of God to man. Here is seen his author- 
ity as father; here the filial spirit of his children. 
His patient goodness is reflected in its parental love, 
and in its care for the infant and the wilful is set 
forth in miniature his tenderness toward the weak 
and erring of mankind. Man reaches his own per- 
sonality only as he approaches God. Through the 
outreaching of his innermost qualities and capacities 
into activity and self-consciousness in the intimate 
and complex relationships of the family, man attains 
a nearness to God and a knowledge of him not else- 
where equalled. This fact gives to the family its 
profound religious significance as the primal and the 
most vital relationship of earthly life. God has not 
made it necessary for man to seek him in “a fugitive 


XI _ THE KINGDOM OF THE FATHER 173 


and cloistered virtue,” withdrawn from the round of 
daily obligation; but has so organized the activities 
of human life as the method of his own disclosure 
that the deeper the earthly relationship, the more per- 
fectly does its realization become to man a revelation 
of God, and has thus made the normal development 
of man’s nature in the various relationships of life the 
highway along which the race has advanced toward 
him. In the institution and maintenance, therefore, 
of the correlated spheres of society, the state, and the 
family, there is manifested the presence and the king- 
dom of the Father. 


XXXIX. The Kingdom of the Father in its Realization 


Deriving their formal unity from the being of God, 
human institutions have their real unity in no abstract 
principle, but in the process of realizing God as in- 
dwelling spirit. A vast enlargement of spiritual life 
follows the recognition of religion as the unfolding of 
God through humanity. This furnishes the clew to 
history, and posits a perfect manhood as civilization’s 
objective point. Augustine’s antithesis between the 
realm of God and the political state gives place to 
the conception of moral development as the granitic 
foundation of social order. 

With this understanding, religion is entering more 
and more into all the interests of men and shaping 
their organizations, activities, and ideals, filling them 
all with its abounding life. The reformer and the 
prophet are finding in this expanding notion a new 
and larger social righteousness. In the name of 
scientific accuracy, religion has been defined thus: 
“A religion is a form of belief, providing an ultra- 


174 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


rational sanction for that large class of conduct 
in the individual where his interests and the inter- — 
ests of the social organism are antagonistic, and 
by which tke former are rendered subordinate to the 
latter in the general interests of the evolution which 
the race is undergoing.” Again it is said: “A 
rational religion is a scientific impossibility, repre- 
senting from the nature of the case an inherent 
contradiction of terms.” This is wholly wrong. It 
contemplates religion as an extraneous revelation, 
unnatural and hostile to reason; whereas religion 
is the outcropping of the immanent God in man as 
he realizes himself in society. So far from antago- 
nizing reason, religion is reason itself conscious of 
the source of its own light; it is the recognition of 
the divine codperation in adjusting the interest of the 
individual and the interests of the social organism as 
one. 

This conception of religion, as a growing assur- 
ance of divine fellowship in producing the moral order 
of the world, brings it down from the mist-land of 
abstract sentiment and discovers in it the means 
of extending man’s ‘sovereignty over materialism — 
the deadliest foe of his spirit—and over the ani- 
malism of his own nature. It establishes his spirit- 
ual life in communion with God, and renders every 
material process tributary to the higher life of human- 
ity. The ancient promise is being fulfilled before 
our eyes, — righteousness shall cover the earth as the 
waters cover the sea. The kingdom of God is being 
transformed from an inner experience into visible real- 
ity. Passing beyond the feelings, thought, acts of the 
individual soul, it penetrates into all social activities 


XI - THE KINGDOM OF THE FATHER 175 


and habitudes and gives law to all forms of collective 
life. “So there will be discovered,” says Maurice, 
“beneath all the politics of earth, sustaining the 
order of each country, upholding the charity of 
each household, a city which hath foundations, whose 
builder and maker is God.” 

The outlines of the Father’s kingdom were blurred 
and indistinct until clearly revealed in the kingdom 
of the Son of Man. The ancient religions did little 
more than consecrate the principal institutions of 
social life by teaching their divine origin and de- 
pendence. Christianity has broadened and fulfilled 
those promises which were darkly foretold, or merely 
hinted in the ethnic faiths, and has established its 
divineness in demonstrating its triumphant ability to 
produce and preserve the highest attainments of 
mankind, whether social or spiritual. This inter- 
twining of the fibres of Christianity with history 
indicates the way in which the kingdom of God, as 
a social energy, is increasingly realizing. itself in the 
redemption of the world. The superiority of Chris- 
tianity to other forms of belief springs immediately 
from its more adequate conception of God. The 
vision of God unfolding himself in the various in- 
stitutions of humanity invests religion with a present- 
day significance, and expands its application till it is 
coextensive with earthly life. This gives it a firm 
grasp upon all those relations wherein the individual 
is organically knit into the social body. This, also, 
enables it to effect the salvation of society by trans- 
forming individual units from never so low a depth 
into that perfect manhood which can be realized only 
in a perfect human society. 


176 THE FAMILY OF GOD > CHAP. 


The introduction of Christianity, through the life 
and teachings of the Christ, marks the beginning of 
conceptions so enormously expanded as to have the 
effect of being totally new. The idea of the Father- 
hood of God, necessarily correlated as it was with 
the idea of the brotherhood of man, brought to view 
an apprehension of the reality of God’s kingdom as 
a present rule, and the interweaving of eternal life 
with current activities as a present experience, which 
lifts man into fellowship with the divine, and makes 
the working out of his redemption a cooperation 
with God. The logic of history, from the time that 
it became social in becoming human, leads clearly to 
the conclusion that this social, or codperative, element 
must increase in proportion to our growth in human- 
ness, until aggregate humanity shall become the 
social whole, whose collective energies are exerted 
for the good of the several units, who, at the same 
time, will find their fullest individuality in the com- 
plete unfolding of their social constitution. The 
Christian conception of God as Father and of all men 
as brethren is the soul of democracy, and the source 
of that individualism which seems now to be taking 
possession of the field, and which many deprecate, but 
which is no more than the initial stages of that reali- 
zation of personality which, in its final outcome, shall 
produce a man able to regard his neighbor as him- 
self. 

Since man is included in the universal process of 
ascent, the actual living of life is the only solution 
of its problems. The significant feature of Chris- 
tianity is that its principles are embodied in personal 
life. It is not a theoretical ‘‘constitution”’ of society, 


XI THE KINGDOM OF THE FATHER 177 


but represents the actual life, humanly lived, of one 
in the bosom of humanity. Its adaptedness to all 
exigencies of life is more perfectly vindicated the 
more fully it is tried. As the Oratorio of Elijah 
gathers toward, and radiates from, the falling of the 
fire from heaven upon the sacrifice, so do human aspi- 
rations and struggles point forward to the Christ as 
their culmination, and look backward to him as the 
pattern of their desires. No changes of dogma, 
no shifting of the centre of Biblical authority, can 
weaken the constructive influence of that life upon 
our social progress. In the union of God and man 
we reach the highest result of man’s development. 
In the Christ we have this result attained to a degree 
beyond which, so far, we can imagine nothing further. 
The Christian conception of man, therefore, is a reali- 
zation of the kingdom of God in its fulness, because 
it lays hold upon humanity at the apex of his nature 
—his spiritual relations to God. It raises person- 
ality to its highest power in making the measure of 
its endeavor the stature of him who is the ideal of 
personal worth. In the production of holy character, 
as the universal type, is comprehended the governing 
principle of the highest kingdom that can be sup- 
posed. The spirit of Christ is the spirit of free son- 
ship, and restrains the assertion of liberty to holy 
ends. The realization of such a kingdom is in the 
recognition of a universal brotherhood after the 
pattern of him whose life found its keynote in 
the words, —J do always the things that are pleas- 
ing to God. 

Grounded thus in the nature of humanity, the 
kingdom of God is able to develop itself freely in 

N 


178 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


all circumstances and in all conditions of national 
or racial life. It propagates itself by transforming 
those of lower type into proximate conformity to 
its own standards. To as many as receive it, it 
gives power to become sons of God—to accept the 
reign of the Father. Communication of the divine 
life is hastened by the direct influence of men upon 
each other. The holy spirit of God has become 
tangible and definite as the form of the divine self- 
communication, since its projection upon the - back- 
ground of the character and consciousness of Jesus 
Christ. Through him the personality of the spirit is 
made manifest in holiness of personal life. 

There is close analogy between social and religious 
institutions. As the social impulse carried out re- 
sults in society, so spiritual development produces 
the self-mastery, the aspirations, and the observances 
of religion. The social impulse, carried still further, 
gives rise to organized civil society and the state. 
The religious elements in the human constitution, 
when sufficiently produced, take corporate form in 
the church as an organization. The individual con- 
gregation holds to the entire religious community a 
relation similar to that which the family sustains 
toward society at large. A high development of the 
human faculties produces these political and social 
forms; a higher development, by the same law, pro- 
duces these spiritual forms. Though ofttimes in the 
church the spirit has been subordinated to the form, 
yet, even then, by means of its closely welded organi- 
zation, and its influence as the repository of the 
richest heritage that humanity had yet secured, the 
church was able to become the conservator of society 


xI | THE KINGDOM OF THE FATHER 179 


and the brood-nest from whence new forces and re- 
generating influences have gone forth for the reha- 
bilitating of the people’s life. The manifestation of 
God in humanity tends more and more not only to 
order, but to order in the highest forms which his 
revelation is able to assume. Entering into and bring- 
ing the nation into being in his ascending progress, 
he passes on to fulfil himself in his church. That 
civic virtue, which, according to Aristotle, it is the end 
of the state to produce, is but a stage in man’s devel- 
opment. In it he fulfils no more than his place as 
an earthly being. There is a ltigher destiny and a 
worthier end before him, and this is reached in that 
continuation of the state in the church which arises 
from the fuller carrying out of the spiritual possibili- 
ties of his nature. ‘The political community,” so 
Aquinas taught, “is to be the preparation for that 
higher community, the state of God.” 

The state, then, realizes itself fully only in the 
Christian state. It is but the beginning of an exhaus- 
tive series of spiritual disciplines by which humanity 
is developed. In the words of Rothe, “Christianity 
is essentially a political principle and a political 
power. It is constructive of the state, and bears in 
itself the power of forming the state and of develop- 
ing it to its full completeness.” The prayer, 7hy 
kingdom come, therefore, is a prayer not for the 
Father's realm, but for his reign. God’s sovereignty 
has been over the kingdoms of earth from the begin- 
ning, and they are slowly becoming his kingdom in 
willing subjection. The kingdom of God is essen- 
tially a social conception, at once real and ideal. It 
‘already exists, and it is always becoming. It disre- 


180 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


gards the distinctions of nationality, of sex, of status, 
and seeks to unite all mankind in a loyalty to God 
which shall subject man’s entire life unto him. Thus 
it is the kingdom of him who is the truth and is the 
beginning of the reign of him whose years are eternal. 
In proportion as the individual subject of this kingdom 
advances toward the full realization of his own per- 
sonality, does he bring nearer the perfect kingdom of 
God. A consciousness of fellow-men accompanies 
progress in consciousness of self and God. Hence 
the full self-realization of Jesus and his perfect con- 
sciousness of God fifid natural expression, and become 
representative for all men in the prayer for the estab- 
lishing of that kingdom in which man attains his 
highest in attaining fullest accord with God. 

The conception of both the religious and the politi- 
cal organizations, as natural unfoldings of the human 
constitution, makes consistent and safe the expectation 
that the whole of humanity shall sometime become 
incorporated in this divine kingdom. As the idea 
that God is in all life takes possession more and more 
of men, the distinction between church and state will 
narrow, not by the secularization of the religious life, 
but by the consecration of all life to the divine ideal. 
No clear-cut separation can be made between different 
phases of the common life of humanity. No man 
liveth to himself. The solidarity of the race is a pro- 
found reality. The individual is a distinct member, 
yet. vitally connected with the race. The redemption 
of mankind, therefore, is social. It is of states and 
institutions, as well as of individuals, or of the church 
as a section apart. The guiding principle of the 
church should be, therefore, a recognition of its high 


XI THE KINGDOM OF THE FATHER 181 


calling of God in Christ Jesus to take humanity 
wherever found, and by the compulsion of love draw 
it into that heart communion with God which is the 
essence of religion and which, once attained, brings 
all else into subjection to him. 

The church should hasten to accept its commission 
to be the common meeting ground of all those who 
through similar relation to the universal Father are 
brethren one of another. It is to exhibit more and 
more that tenderness for the helpless and the needy 
which has characterized God-filled souls from the be- 
ginning down, and gives such winsome attractiveness 
to the ancient pages of Holy Writ; it is to be the 
guardian of the rights of the poor; it is to be the 
vindicator of the oppressed; it is to set forth in all 
the grandeur and sublimity of personal attainment 
the revealed justice of God, and in all the gentleness 
of compassion and charity the longsuffering of the 
divine mercy. The conception of the church has 
greatly widened. We now understand that it has to 
do with the body no less than with the soul of man. 
Recognizing the goings of God in the advancing 
social order, it will codperate with the various agen- 
cies that work for the uplifting of men, whether 
nominally sacred or secular, assured that, since God is 
the life of his world, the Zeitgeist is the Holy Spirit. 
When the church becomes expanded to the boun- 
daries of the kingdom of God, it will discover that no 
interest of humanity is foreign to it. Whether work 
or worship, whether labor or recreation, whether want 
or luxury, whether men eat, drink, fast, or pray, 
whatsoever they do, all is comprehended in their rela- 
tion to that kingdom. The church’s activities are to 


182 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


be bounded by nothing short of the necessities of the 
race —it is the ministering hand of God, and what- 
ever is lacking to the true advancement of society it 
is to supply. 

While the church should hold itself aloof from no 
public interest, its chief aim is the cultivation in its 
members of that divine life from whose energizing all 
ameliorations spring. One quite important, perhaps 
the most important, function of the church is to give 
both opportunity and incentive to congregate worship, 
intensifying the individual’s spiritual aspirations and 
influences by the reciprocal action of the multitude 
upon him, and thus furnish at once the fountain and 
the channel for power and inspiration which go forth 
in a thousand rills to water the desert places of 
humanity till they blossom as the rose. A large 
measure of what seems indifference to religious things, 
results from arrested spiritual development through 
habitual neglect of those capacities by which the 
things of God are assimilated. To such dwarfed 
souls the struggle for physical existence fills the 
entire horizon. To such the first gospel needed is 
the gospel of sympathy and helpfulness, a little true 
brotherly codperation in lifting the crushing burdens 
under which they are pressed to earth, that they may 
have opportunity to look toward a Father in Heaven. 
The representative of the living growing spirit, which 
is unfolding day by day in a thousand forms, as the 
leaves of the forest unfold in the spring sunlight, 
must itself be no anachronism. It must call men to 
act in the living present and spiritualize their lives 
by recognizing the spiritual process everywhere going 
forward about them. The monks and nuns of old 


XI THE KINGDOM OF THE FATHER 183 


time prayed and fasted and kept their penitential 
vigils, but the vassal still bowed his head to his 
burden; the robber baron still plundered and mur- 
dered ; the strong still oppressed the weak. By them 
the world was given over to the reign of wickedness. 
Now the church is coming out from its cloister. 
It is entering into all the avenues of business, of 
politics, of social conditions, it is following its Master 
into all the haunts of men. 

Basing itself upon the broad, underlying, organic 
oneness of humanity, the church finds strength and 
vitality for every duty which grows out of this rela- 
tion, and is enabled to deal with human life as a unit 
in all its activities. It may devote itself to relieving 
social distresses ; to subjecting wealth to the service 
of poverty ; to capitalizing intellect and culture as a 
fund held in trust for the common progress; to 
creating and brightening homes for the homeless 
multitudes; to the redemption of art and science 
and trade; to the bringing of the saving influences 
of Christianity into such vital touch with hitherto 
neglected masses, by breaking down old forms and 
minting the imperishable coin of the kingdom with a 
new impression, that the divine unity and the divine 
relations of mankind shall be revealed in a society 
practically realizing and embodying in its daily living 
that brotherhood of man which becomes the family of 
God. As the soil, the barren rock, the refuse of the 
kitchen, yielding themselves to the call of the sun- 
shine and the vital chemistry of vegetation, ascend 
to a higher kingdom and are born anew into a noble 
beauty of blossom and utility of fruitage, so the 
kingdoms of this world, with all their hardness, their 


184 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


coldness, their selfish aims, are transformed, by the 
upward tendency of souls that yield to the spirit of 
God, into the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ ; 
and there may be written upon its walls those words 
of divine destiny, still legible, in spite of Mohame- 
dan usurpation and destruction by fire, on the old 
church in Damascus: ‘Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an 
everlasting kingdom ; and thy dominion from genera- 
tion to generation.” 


XL. The Kingdom of Man at Hand 


The kingdom of God is manifested in the realiza- 


tion of a perfect humanity ; the kingdom of man is 
realized in a perfect manifestation of God: the king- 


dom of God and the kingdom of man are one. There. 


is no antagonism between the two. God and man 
are working together toward a common end, or rather 
God is working, in and through man, the accomplish- 
ment of a purpose which is none other than the 
perfecting of man himself. All advance in human 
well-being is but a carrying out of his will and reveal- 
ing more clearly the kingdom of God. Man has so 
inseparable a share in bringing in this kingdom — it 
expands only with his growth, and it furnishes the 
occasion of his highest development and the sphere 
of his noblest activities —that when completed it is 
truly the kingdom of man. 

When man emerged from his long competitive 


career at the head of the creature line and entered © 


into his kingdom as human, there was completed a 
revolution surpassing in extent and significance any 
that has since taken place. At that time the sceptre 
of sovereignty over the existence, the variation, and 


4, 
ate 5 


XI THE KINGDOM OF MAN AT HAND 185 


the advancement of all earth-life passed from the 
hand of “nature” into his. Henceforth, he extermi- 
nated or he multiplied species; he improved the 
characteristics of those whom he selected more in 
a century than natural selection had been able to do 
in ages; he transformed the wild grass of the Asiatic 
steppes into the food grains of a world; he glorified 
a few straggling petals into the Jacqueminot rose; 
he transformed the wild rose-hip into the Northern 
Spy; he developed a bitter embryo almond into the 
luscious Crawford peach. Beyond all that he has 
done for these lower orders man has accomplished 
for himself. He has enlarged the log on which he 
timidly crept down the rivers into the great Atlantic 
liner in which he dominates the ocean ; he has replaced 
his apron of leaves with the luxurious products of the 
loom; his scanty meal of shell-fish has become a 
bountiful feast of viands from every clime and ele- 
ment ;- his early signal fire on the hilltop now flashes 
its message around the globe by means of 


“ Thunderless lightnings smiting under seas”: 
oD fen} ’ 


he has yoked his rude sledge to the aurora borealis, 
made the clouds grind in his mills, taught the sun to 
paint his pictures; and waits but a little while till he 
shall mount the blue ether and ride its aerial waves. 
It is, however, less this dominion over the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms and this mastery of natural 
laws and processes, than the steady rise of mankind, 
as a whole, and the prerogative of self-ownership and 
self-direction that marks the beginning of the era of 
Man. Increasing recognition of the universality of 
God in human affairs, and the resulting continuity 


186 THE FAMILY OF GOD, CHAP, 


of history as the gradual outworking of the welfare 
of the race, throws the burden of proof, to say the 
least, upon those who claim that inequalities of 
condition are now more marked than formerly, and 
threaten the unity of society. The solidarity of man- 
kind is not theoretical, but real—it cannot be broken. 


“In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim.” 


The encroachment of the sea upon the continent 
is not more steady and resistless than the climbing 
of the masses of humanity into the prerogatives 
and favorable conditions once monopolized by the 
few. The state has won its independence from 
the tyrant and the usurper; the individual has won 
his independence from the arbitrary authority of the 
state; the humble-born has won his independence 
from the aristocrat; the man has won his indepen- 
dence from the master. Government has been trans- 
lated from a military to an industrial basis ; industry 
itself has been emancipated successively from slavery, 
from feudalism, and from the hardest conditions of 
the wage system; and the same influences that have 
triumphed thus far are still in the field, visibly work- 
ing to put away the last remnants of injustice and 
inequality. 

A great revolution has taken place in the thoughts 
of men toward each other. Consciousness of kind, 
from an unknown quantity, or one existing only in 
the vision of the dreamer, has become an important. 
factor, with which it is necessary to reckon in all 
social concerns. The intellectual class, those who 
have culture and wealth and leisure, the class that 
formerly looked down with stoical indifference upon 


XI THE KINGDOM OF MAN AT HAND 187 


the multitudes in their pitiful ignorance and poverty 
and distress, are now giving sympathetic attention 
to the causes which produce and the forces which 
may change these unhappy conditions. In becoming 
a movement from above downward, instead of a blind 
groping from beneath upward, the social problem 
takes on a new character and becomes much more 
hopeful of solution. Not that these problems are 
about to be quickly and fully solved! Human life 
will necessarily continue a perpetual readjustment, 
probably with somewhat stern conditions. When, 
however, all grades of society begin to codperate in 
raising mankind to the highest feasible level not 
alone of material comfort, but also of such just esti- 
mate of life’s meaning that its higher values shall 
emerge into view, then it will become generally recog- 
nized that the life is more than meat and the body 
more than raiment, and man will have gone far 
toward entering upon his universal kingdom in hav- 
ing obtained sovereignty over himself. It is toward 
this end that events are tending. The mastery over 
material forces, which has placed these mighty ser- 
vants at the disposal of man, levels up humanity by 
placing all nature under its feet. This has changed 
the form and tendency of our civilization ; for while 
it has added little, comparatively, to the rich and 
powerful, it has set a new and higher value upon the 
man at the bottom of society, made him increasingly 
necessary to the common well-being, and shown how 
dependent upon him are all other classes. At the 
same time it lightens the burdens upon his shoulders, 
shortens the hours of his toil, increases the rewards 
for his labor, and develops his human qualities. 


188 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


_ The whole tendency is upward throughout the 
entire social frame. From the first dawnings in the 
savage mind of thoughtfulness for others, and of 
seeking an end beyond present wants, the ascent 
is immeasurable to the spirit of altruism and the 
subordination of all things to ethical ends which are 
becoming the standards of to-day. It is the higher 
qualities that are gaining. One can find only in the 
backward regions, among the peasantry of Russia, or 
the fellahin of Egypt, that condition of moral and 
mental hopelessness which once was universal. There 
are no longer any hermit nations, no members of 
the universal body of humanity through which the 
rich arterial blood does not circulate. A thousand 
channels of intercommunication and interchange of 
thoughts, ideals, and hopes are raising gradually and 
powerfully the average manhood of the race. The 
entire plane of humanity is being slowly elevated to 
a higher altitude. 

A most fallacious method of estimating what is 
likely to be is to compute future advances by the 
rate of progress hitherto achieved. To one who 
gives thoughtful attention to the field at large, the 
cumulative tendencies manifested in all departments 
of human activity are startling. The greatest gains 
for an equal period in the conditions of the laborer 
have been made within the memory of living men. 
The wealth of the United States in the decade be- 
tween the two census years 1880 and 1890 increased 
beyond the combined previous accumulations since 
the landing of Columbus. The greatest discoveries 
of power are the most recent. The scientific achieve- 
ments of the last five years surpass those of any 


XI THE KINGDOM OF MAN AT HAND 189 


former five years in the world’s history. An im- 
portant thing to notice is that progress is not only 
continuous, but the rate of progress is accelerated, 
and the steps in advance more comprehensive and 
far-reaching in their results. How vastly did the 
petroleum beds exceed the sperm whale in illuminat- 
ing and other value; how surpassingly has structural 
iron replaced the disappearing forests. More signifi- 
cant than all these physical triumphs and successes 
is the swifter progress discernible in the masses of 
men. Whatever tends to liberate humanity, promotes 
social prosperity. Forward movements in social life 
wait upon the convictions of the multitude. It took 
nearly a century of dishonor, culminating in civil war, 
to place in the Declaration of Independence Jeffer- 
son’s rejected clause condemning the slave-trade. 
The rising tide of public opinion will gradually sweep 
away kindred barbarities that still linger. Gradual 
broadening down of privilege and opportunity to all 
members of society alike, under the impulse furnished 
by the awakening altruistic feelings, will tend, as it 
has tended and is tending, to release a vast aggregate 
of personal power, and to bring into use the entire 
availability of humanity for the general good. Prog- 
ress will then be proportionately quickened and its 
effects diffused in the same way, only over wider 
areas, that intellect was stimulated in Greece and 
religion in Palestine. Thus also the vast social worth 
of such obscure gems as Luther, Stephenson, or of 
Faraday, multiplied a myriad-fold, will be utilized 
for the common good. After all, what most gives 
hope in the midst of discouragement to those who 
struggle to help men upward is man’s deep-lying 


190 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


capacity, when once you can reach and awaken it, 
for those lofty spiritual verities which reveal the 
imperishable destiny and the infinitely expanding 
possibilities that lie in a continuous approach God- 
ward of the human soul. 

An inexhaustible future beckons a race that feels 
the energies of the eternal God tingling in its nerves. 
We are part of a growing organism, and human prog- 
ress is a living experience, therefore there is hope 
ahead. That which is impossible now, is becoming 
possible. Men are willing to sacrifice the present 
to the future, and to labor on assured that to-day’s 
dream will have become the fact to-morrow. Our 
race is grounded in God, and we shall yet partake in 
unimagined measure of his infinitude. 


“Tf twenty million summers are stored in the sunlight still, 
We are far from the noon of man —there is time for the race 
to grow.” 


Humanity’s great terms, its great experiences, 
its great attainments, are yet to come. Led by its 
Father's hand it will yet enter and take possession 
of a kingdom to the hither frontier of which it has as 
yet scarcely come. A dim anticipation of this even 
now thrills in the expectation of the seers who are 
looking for the coming of the promise. A great 
hope, a greater hope than ever before, casts a glory 
upon the advancing years. Science is straining for- 
ward, confident that profounder secrets than any yet 
discovered are just within her reach. Great increase 
of population, with its accompaniment of augmented 
power, is anticipated without the dread which struck 
terror to the heart of the philanthropist of the last 


XI THE KINGDOM OF MAN AT HAND 191 


generation ; for the productiveness of nature and our 
ability to use the resources of the universe are seen 
to increase more rapidly than our ability to turn them 
to practical use, while great natural food-fields lie yet 
untouched in the tropic and subtemperate regions. 
The dangers that were supposed to threaten gov- 
ernment when intrusted to the multitude are found 
to sober and ennoble those who exercise its high 
prerogatives. 

A common error, one which vitiates much excellent 
reasoning, is the assumption that human nature re- 
mains a fixed quantity, while all else changes. One 
hundred years hence, with many more people on the 
earth, there will be less bloodshed and less discomfort 
than now. One hundred years ago there were fewet 
people, but more conflict and less general comfort 
than to-day. Things were worse two hundred years 
before that ; worse still one thousand, five thousand, 
years earlier. Human nature is improving, and as 
manhood grows men are increasingly able by inven- 
tion, by combination, by codperation to take care of 
themselves. We need not, then, dread the day of 
increased population, nor the wider spread of civili- 
zation, so long as the higher man increases propor- 
tionately. Even should the antagonism of man with 
man, the evils of war and crime and disease, and the 
sharpness of the struggle for existence be overcome 
and pass away, there would still remain in the pursuit 
of spiritual ends, in enriching and diversifying to the 
fullest degree the higher life, much and of still nobler 
quality with which to occupy the uttermost energies 
of mankind. The kingdom of man will be realized 
when he has transformed himself and his environ- 


192 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. XI 


ment from these rude beginnings in which, to use the 
suggestive language of John Fiske, “the physical life 
is but an appendage to the body into that fully devel- 
oped humanity in which the body is but the vehicle 
of the soul.” 


CHAPTER XII 
THY WILL BE DONE, AS IN HEAVEN, SO ON EARTH 


XLI. God’s Will the Rule of Conduct 


Ho iness lies at the heart of God’s Fatherhood, 
and Holy Father is the name in which is summed up 
his ethical relations to mankind. In him holiness 
counterbalances benevolence, saving mercy from 
weakening into indulgence by securing that even 
love shall be just. In its members, humanity 
springs from the being of God; in its moral quali- 
ties, it is the progressive manifestation of the divine 
essence as holy will. The ethics of men rests upon 
the righteousness of God; his will is the authority 
of his kingdom. 

There can be for any person but one rule of right, 
and that is, perfect harmony with the end and law of 
his being. The ultimate sanction of our ethical sys- 
tem necessarily, therefore, is found in the require- 
ments of perfect personality. By a finite spirit 
related to other spirits, a perfect personality can be 
realized only in the perfect fulfilment of its relations. 
Life upon the earth is, therefore, a course of conduct, 
and for this, men, in their ignorance and immaturity, 
need some rule by which to walk. This needed 
guidance is given in the will of God revealed, not 
as a perfectly formulated code of instructions de- 
livered from without, but in man’s steadily increasing 

o 193 


194 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


apprehension of his own destiny through better un- 
derstanding of the divine will concerning him, as 
God more and more manifests himself in human life 
and institutions. 

Moral science gains a new and firmer basis in this 
recognition of God as the one ground out of which 
all human excellences spring. The very postulate 
of God regards him as the perfect balance of personal 
qualities, wisdom, justice, and love, which — perfect 
in him—are rudimentary in man. Their gradual 
unfolding in humanity is identical with the fuller 
manifestation of God. In this conception morality 
attains a new birth. Life is seen to derive its worth 
from the personal relations which each soul enjoys 
for itself with the great primal personal source of 
life. Duty springs out of an obligation lying far 
deeper than any reciprocal requirements of the social 
state. It is not the demand for obedience to an ex- 
ternal command, it is the uprising within a man’s 
own soul of those eternal principles of righteousness 
which he has already beheld in God. He needs, 
therefore, no separate faculty by which to interpret 
these new phenomena; he needs but to turn in a 
new direction that same power of knowledge by 
which he has adapted himself to other requirements, 
and apply his soul’s entire energies, as occasion may 
arise, to discover and carry out what is needful to 
reproduce the divine will in the exercises of his own. 
Ethical, as well as intellectual, judgment is the 
result of culture, and grows strong and clear as man’s 
nature, of which it is an essential factor, enlarges. 
The moral law is no other than the highest expres- 
sion of the reason as it addresses itself to giving 


XII GOD’S WILL THE RULE OF CONDUCT 195 


complete expression to the life-ideal. Moral prog- 
ress results from increased accuracy and extended 
application of the moral judgment as developed from 
a rational, rather than from an emotional, premise. 
There is no duality consisting of the rational and 
the ethical in man’s nature. These two are one. 
The struggle in which man seems engaged through 
all the historic centuries is not between his reason 
and his moral impulse, but between his lower self, as 
actualized in the round of common intercourse, and 
his higher self struggling into birth. Man strives 
toward his own highest possibilities only under the 
stimulus of a conscious relation of person to Person. 
The whole of man’s ethical history is but an explica- 
tion of the interplay of these two forces, — God indeed 
recognized as primal and transcendent, but man, also, 
feeling that there is an actual blending of his will 
with God’s will in such a way that, while acting in 
accordance with his own deepest, truest will, he is 
also doing God’s will, and by that will his life is 
governed. Here is the true penetralia in which God 
and man commune. One is what he wills; not what 
he does. ‘‘ Nothing can be conceived in the world,” 
says Kant, “or even out of it, which can be called 
good without qualification, except a good will.” 
Much more than pious volition is comprehended 
in good will. It is the expression of the soul’s> 
whole past, —of its temptations, its struggles, its de- 
feats, its victories, its widening endeavors, its nobler 
aims, its fuller self-command, in a word it is character. 
Because it is character, the sweep of good will is over. 
all the field of life. It kindles the fire of duty and 
obligation upon every man’s altar, because it is itself 


196 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


kindled at the central fire of the righteous will of God. 
It sets the bow of promise in the western horizon, be- 
cause its progress is toward a perfect reflection in it- 
self of the character of him who is perfectly just. It 
gathers the inspiration for the crucifixion of selfishness 
upon the cross of a neighbor’s right from a growing 
intercourse in personal communion with him whose 
basal impulse is self-denying love. 

The nature of man determines both his end and the 
means.by which he shall attain it. And when it is 
found that the nature of man is at bottom one with 
God, it is evident that he will realize the true end of 
his being only ina complete conformity to that divine 
norm. Life itself is the only answer to that funda- 
mental question of ethics: “ What is the normal hu- 
man life?”” This answer, easy enough to state, be- 
comes actualized in the individual’s experience only by 
the laborious process of self-reflection, with its result- 
ing activities, in which the soul is made aware of its 
capacities and accepts them as responsibilities. Man 
has no abstract existence, but is clothed with a rich 
endowment of concrete relations. In fulfilling these, 
he at the same time discharges all objective obliga- 
tions to the family, the state, society, and subjectively 
works out into real existence the potencies of his own 
nature. 

Historically, man is seen to make himself in the 
process of unfolding his own constitution in various 
social relations. The rule of conduct which he needs, 
therefore, is one written in terms of life. In recogni- 
tion of this, everywhere the highest available exam- 
ples of personality have been used as the standard of 
judgment by which intercourse between man and man 


XII GOD’S WILL THE RULE OF CONDUCT 197 


has been regulated. In the Christ the law of social 
relations received an embodiment so satisfactory and 
comprehensive, that while men of all schools of thought 
admit that its application would be the perfect solu- 
tion of these vexing problems, they still debate 
whether his ideals are attainable by ordinary men. 
After nineteen centuries he still remains the one 
prophet of the Moral Order whose declaration of its 
principles and applications are unchallenged and au- 
thoritative. It is as impossible to explain the true eth- 
ical system of the modern world, without taking into 
account the new light which he has brought to bear 
upon all questions pertaining to rights and duties, as 
to describe the motions of the planets without refer- 
ence to the sun. His interpretation of these relations 
lifts them at once into the realm of personality, where 
they cease to be formal and become ethical in becom- 
ing the conditions under which God is actually mani- 
festing himself in humanity, and man is seen to be 
slowly attaining his end as he codperates with God in 
the development of his own personality. 

Morality is not quantitative but qualitative. The 
whole life must be brought under its sway. There is 
no section into which the ethical imperative does not 
enter, nor any sphere which rises above its authority. 
Because Christianity recognizes the all-comprehending 
sovereignty of the divine will, it justifies Origen’s fine 
description of it in the words: “Christianity is more 
than one of the world’s religions; it is the declara- 
tion of the way of righteousness.”’ Ethics enters the 
arena of human life as the arbiter of personal relations. 
These constitute both the precedent condition and the 
substance of morality. As these relations grow up 


198 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


spontaneously out of the common soil of human nat- 
ure, so ethics deals with them so far as they are al- 
terable by the human will manifested in society. No 
antagonism, therefore, exists between the interests of 
the individual and the interests of society, since soci- 
ety is determined in the relations of its individual 
members, and the genuine ethics is the law by which 
these mutual interests are adjusted. Conscience, as 
the common term for the mind’s judging and feeling 
with reference to personal conduct, has unity and 
authority in that it concerns but one object, — Duty. 
Ethics likewise has unity and power to command in 
that it represents the common judgment with refer- 
ence to social right. But since ethics covers the 
whole of character, duties and rights are correlative. 
A man is not less but more a man by being a man in 
society. His right and his duty, therefore, may be 
comprehended under the general statement that his 
right to carry out his true nature to its fruition is 
balanced by his duty to bear his part in enabling 
others to do the same. 

Life is not a vacuum into which the successive 
generations of men are born; they enter into a con- 
dition of things already complex and with preéstab- 
lished order. Law arises as the continuing will. of 
the people, not unalterable indeed, which reaches 
forward and back to guard the interests of the unborn 
and execute the purpose of the dead. This embodied 
will is that through which the ethical spirit works. 
Without such organization of the common purpose 
the righteousness of a cause will not secure its tri- 
umph. The function of such civic institutions as may 
be grouped under the name of law is to help each 


XII GOD’S WILL THE RULE OF CONDUCT 199 


man in his endeavor to attain to self-perfection in con- 
nection with others engaged in the same effort. Law 
is the expression of the common endeavor to establish 
conditions under which the will of one may organi- 
cally unite with the will of all. While, therefore, law 
is inevitable in society, it is only as the natural pre- 
requisite of freedom. If it seems at times to con- 
strain, a closer scrutiny will discover that in obedience 
to law alone is liberty. Law is the freely chosen course 
of action of free spirit. 

On this ground the will of man and the will of God 
coincide ; for the will of God is the expression of his 
personality, and the law of man is the expression of 
his personality realized in freedom. Though we do 
not consider God as realizing in himself those tran- 
sient forms in which our differential morality em- 
bodies itself, and which have significance only for 
finite spirits in an educational process, yet, as living 
love, he may become actualized as the foundation of 
our ethical order. The being of God is the ground of 
the universe; the character of God is the substance 
of universal morality. His kingdom is the life of the 
world organized on a basis of love. This is the nexus 
between humanity and God, for his love for man is . 
the utterance of his oneness with him. No perma- 
nently satisfying ethics is possible, therefore, until 
one is worked out in harmony with this self-objectify- 
ing impulse of God, love. Only at the bidding of 
this does he diversify himself in a human race, and 
only in living unity with this basal principle will man 
work out the law of his mutual relations. Only as 
consciously carrying out the will of the indwelling 
God will men so regulate their energies that they 


200 : THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


may become righteous, and so order the upbuilding 
of human life that it may truly reproduce the divine. 


XLII. Conformity to God’s Will the Measure of 
Progress . 

It would be difficult to overestimate the gain to 
ethical science of a general acquiescence in the con- 
ception that humanity is a manifestation of God. 
With his own being posited in universal Being, man’s 
personality will grow to reflect the universal Person, 
and his will become ultimately a reproduction of the 
universal Will. Toward this end man moves in free- 
dom, yet not outside the limitations of finite exist- 
ence. Because man’s whole personality not only, 
but the entire course of his development as well, lies 
within the circumference of the Infinite One, his 
life’s meaning must also lie within God’s all-embra- 
cing purpose. Inasmuch as morality resides only in 
the will, the accomplishment of that purpose, —the 
convergence of many subsidiary ends, — stated in its 
simplest terms, is conformity to the will of God. 
This conformity, however, cannot be secured arbitra- 
rily. There can be no constraint in character. God 
is what he is by free choice; to attain his likeness 
man must be free also. Authority is necessary and 
is not absent; but God commands in laws, not in spe- 
cific injunctions. Because he is free, man withholds 
acquiescence many times, and often antagonizes the 
divine will; but as the educational process continues, 
he comes to recognize that his own best good and 
God’s will concerning him are one, and opposition 
is transformed into codperation. Thus the will of 
God finds expression and attains form and realization 


XII CONFORMITY TO GOD’S WILL 201 


through the workings of the human will, and man’s 
history becomes the history of a progressive realiza- 
tion of the divine will. 

Not alone, however, but through his relations to 
his fellow-men does man work out his true destiny. 
The effort to realize the capabilities of which he is 
conscious produces the concrete institutions of society 
in which he has sought to embody his ideals as they 
rise in the course of a moral process, which passes 
continuously through the better toward the best. 
Thus while men freely choose whether to oppose or 
to codperate with the ethical aims of the Universal 
Will, yet since the ethical, as the final end of the 
Ground of our being, has supreme worth, the test of 
human progress lies in this moral realm. Not num- 
bers, not luxury, not learning, not civilization, but the 
moral status of men is the measure of advance. 

Thus a most important modification has been 
wrought by the development theory in the region 
of ethics. We no longer look to the beginning for 
the highest moral ideas, nor for the universal moral- 
ity. Such a habit of thought was inevitable under 
the influence of the idea that man was created at the 
summit of perfection, and that the farther up the . 
stream we go the purer morals we shall find. In 
accordance with modern conceptions, however, the 
true view is that in this, as in all else, men advance 
from less to more. This gives us, then, a progressive 
morality, and summons all history into court to testify 
to its growth. Humanity is working out for itself a 
life task, which can be accomplished only in the actual 
experiences of living men. In proportion as these 
have recognized their calling, and have set before their 


202 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


eyes a high moral standard, have they been permanent 
and influential upon the world’s destinies. A miscon- 
ception of the destiny of mankind has laid a paralysis 
for ages upon the whole East. These people have 
not grasped the conviction that in order to achieve 
their work in the world the elements of obedience, 
resignation, and mystic communion with God must 
be balanced and sustained by a rational grasp upon 
the relations of which these qualities speak, and which 
require the codperation of man’s intelligence with his 
emotions before there can be any real progress. Con- 
sequently, to the millions of the Orient, the idea of 
individuality, with its corresponding responsibility, is 
vague and the will is defective, lacking the stimulus 
of conscious vital connection with the will of God. 
All along the road which man has travelled lie 
scattered fragments of civilizations that have fallen 
apart through lack of that cohesive force given by 
recognition of a definite goal toward which each one 
is to struggle. Their weakness was, and it is the 
weakness of much modern life, that their desires 
moved mainly in the sphere of pure animalism. They 
had regard chiefly to the satisfying and equalizing of 
material wants. There is a widespread endeavor 
to eliminate difficulty from the conditions of life. 
Neither the individual nor society can permanently 
thrive upon the milk and rose-water of a luxurious 
bodily existence. It is significant of the nature of the 
relationship between God and man that individuals 
and communities hear his voice most distinctly when 
the clamor for self-indulgence, growing out of ease and 
surfeit, is still. In bleak and hardy surroundings, 
God’s voice in the soul is most plainly heard and 


XII CONFORMITY TO GOD’S WILL 203 


noblest character responds. Large material success 
appears inevitably to depress a people into moral 
deficiency. They are tempted evermore to that nega- 
tive attitude of mind which characterized the pre- 
Christian world in its rich and sensuous centres. 
They have no conception of morality as essential to 
human life, because they find no trace of it in the 
round of physical existence, and are tempted by the 
old epicurean spirit not so much to deny God as to 
deny that there is any good, for they lack a conscious- 
ness of God as that vivifying presence by whose 
activity moral progress is secured. 

The teaching of history would seem to be that 
not until men are able to despise the comforts of a 
materia] prosperity, are they worthy to be intrusted 
with it. The welfare of mankind consists not in 
the growth of happiness, but in approximation to 
moral perfection. Establishment of outer social feli- 
cities marks not advance but retrogression, unless 
accompanied or preceded by strife for ethical free- 
dom. This alone is the spirit of progress. That 
portion of our nature which can be nourished by 
temporal good, and even that part which finds its 
field in the reciprocal duties of social life, is soon 
satisfied; but that inner voice which demands an 
expansion of the soul’s own existence is a growing 
requirement which calls forth a man’s most active 
effort in the fulfilment of a destiny which steadily 
enlarges before him. 

Society and the individual, like the outer and inner 
portions of a building’s framework, arise together and 
condition each other. The organic unity of its sepa- 
rate individuals constitutes the ethical cosmos upon 


204 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


the basis of reciprocal needs and duties. Social and 
political institutions are the forms in which a develop- 
ing manhood asserts itself, and are transformed from 
time to time as the ethical ideals of their constituent 
members vary. Resulting from a common. spiritual 
activity, social life is codperative not only, and pre- 
supposes such factors in the human constitution of its 
several units as enables them to supplement each 
other, but provides at the same time that general 
condition under which it is possible for men to fulfil, 
each for himself, those moral capacities which require 
the social life for their unfolding. 

By this correlation of men with each other the 
interests of self and others are not only reconciled 
but identified. Apart from his fellows the indi- 
vidual is but a fragment. He does not complete 
himself at the expense of another, but each brings to 
each what otherwise is lacking, and the social fabric 
is woven of these filaments thrown out to meet the 
social demands which they supply. As these per- 
sonal relations cross and mingle, the one becomes 
incorporated with the many in an identity which 
grows more complete as the common life develops. 
A careful study of the conditions under which human- 
ity has reached its present stage leads to the convic- 
tion that, as physical selection culminated in the 
structure of man, enthroning him as the highest 
creature-form possible to the earth, so ethical selec- 
tion is enthroning Community as the social ideal. 
Neither egotism alone nor altruism alone is sufficiently 
broad to form the moral basis of society ; humanity 
is not self nor others, but one. A purely selfish 
life is more than suicidal, it is impossible; altruism 


XII CONFORMITY TO GOD’S WILL 205 


strictly defined is equally impossible, and would be 
not less suicidal were it possible. However zealously 
preached or self-denyingly applied in action, altruism 
can never be any more than a temporary resting-place 
between a brute individualism and a social order which 
recognizes that the interests of men, singly and collec- 
tively, are mutual. What is already actual in fact 
will come to be accepted as truth, and one’s self as 
a member of society, while consisting of a non-trans- 
ferable self-consciousness as its nucleus, is yet made 
up of other selves, which fill it out to the full meas- 
ure of social being. Only in the act of fulfilling those 
reciprocal functions which pertain to man as a factor 
of the social organism, does he realize his own well- 
being. Refusing this, he is not a man, but a mere 
parasitic atom without place or meaning in the human 
whole; expenditure of self is thus seen to be the 
necessary condition of attaining the true self. While 
I am sacrificing myself to my neighbor, he at the same 
time is sacrificing himself to me. 

The social fabric can advance toward its ideal state 
no faster than its individual components realize the 
end of their being. The resulting complexity of 
relationship, by which the entire community becomes | 
more strongly influenced by the actions of each of its 
members, has been thought to indicate a subordina- 
tion of the individual, whereas this but marks the 
progress of the majority in pursuit of their divine 
calling. What retards society as a whole is the 
undeveloped stage in which a portion of its members 
rest. Here, in this rank and undisciplined growth, 
lurk the social evils which persist in spite of intelli- 
gent and earnest efforts to remove them. That sub- 


206 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


jection of private to public interests, which many 
think increasingly characterizes modern life, spends 
its force upon those persons who withhold their 
active cooperation from forward movement. Selfish- 
ness, whether active or passive, opposes itself to the 
power and intent of the universal will, both as it 
exists primarily in God and as it is reflected in 
humanity. 

Disastrous as this course must inevitably prove to 
those who indulge themselves in it, they none the 
less clog the free movement of the whole. Social 
ideals can be realized only as all the social units are 
educated toward their attainment. The remedy, 
therefore, is in man’s own hands. By applying his 
best reason, and his noblest spirit also, it is possible 
for him to hasten the day of better conditions for all. 
He need not wait the slow evolution of a blind 
struggle for life, but by bending all his energies to 
the development of that character through which 
alone permanent blessing can come he may hasten 
on its appearing. A sublime call came to man at 
the moment when advancing attainment brought him 
to that point from which he was to modify the factors 
of his own evolution. The struggle for life was then 
transferred from the individual to the social organism. 
While an animal, he had no ability, consequently no 
obligation, to do more than utilize and forward such - 
accretions of force as came to him from his ancestors. 
Now, in the complications of social life men are made 
administrators for each other; the stronger and the 
shrewder can, if they wish, defraud the weaker. Thus 
a fearful responsibility is intrusted to men in intrust- 
ing to them stewardship of others as well as the men- 


XII CONFORMITY TO GOD’S WILL 207 


tal and moral freedom toward which each is personally 
working. It is, however, becoming clear even under 
the law of survival, as expanded to meet the require- 
ments of the social state, man has no right to create 
or permit such contrasts of opportunity and privilege 
as still far too largely prevail. Society can find a way 
if it will, and it must find it or perish, to equalize the 
conditions of its members. The gentle rule of Jesus 
is at the same time the thunder of Sinai. The social 
unit that sinneth —is selfish — shall die. The great 
law, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, is grounded 
in the social constitution of man. 

We are not, then, dependent for progress upon the 
aimless gropings of selfish passions, blind and reck- 
less. Our course is shaped by our own conscious 
effort. But in discovering that intelligence is our 
guide, we also discover that the social forces are 
personal, internal, and spiritual. It is because of this 
truth —though the fact itself has often been but 
imperfectly apprehended or even totally misappre- 
hended —that the Christ has entered with such vital- 
izing and formative power into these later ages. He 
appeals to men not through a vacant awe, inspired by 
the contemplation of a being from another sphere, 
but with the helpful consciousness of the partnership 
of all men with him in his triumph over the material 
and the animal, and their complete entrance into the 
fellowship exemplified in him with that divine will 
whose unfolding is the progress of the world. That 
great forward movement which takes its way through 
the generations, a Gulf Stream in the human sea, and 
which we comprehend with all its myriad meanings 
and outreaching activities in the word Christianity, 


208 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


is the gradual approach of all men, guided by the 
same indwelling spirit, to that stage which they have 
reached, representatively, in him. This is no loose 
association of men, bound together by merely emo- 
tional ties; it is infinite Being rising into fuller 
manifestation as it moves toward the fulfilment of 
its aim in a perfected humanity. The consciousness 
- of this continuous working of God in human energies 
and activities is the basis of all true ethics; for this 
alone can give that sense of universal relationship 
to him which is the ground of all right relations 
between men. It is thus seen to be a social as well 
as organic force which is directing human history. 
It is the revelation of the kingdom of God, a kingdom 
grounded in justice and established in love, which 
God has wrought as a dwelling-place for his children. 
All the elements of the divine character may there- 
fore reasonably be expected to reappear in human 
society. 

Not at once, however. We look not upon its 
finished, but upon its preparatory, stages; neverthe- 
less, we have reached a point from which it is pos- 
sible to see that steadily the supreme worth of man’s 
moral nature is becoming recognized, and that all the 
forms and achievements of society are judged by their 
ability to further his ethical development. We are 
discerning that morality, however flouted by the sel- 
fish impulses, is still the basis of society, and that we 
grow in goodness as our consciousness of the God 
within us becomes more clear. Assured conviction 
that this 7s the will of God, even our sanctification, is 
the reason that Christianity bears such a buoyant 
hope in its bosom. Great evils still linger, injustice 


XII HARMONY WITH GOD’S WILL 209 


between man and man is still rife, self still seeks to 
profit at the expense of others; but more and more 
expectation increases of the new earth wherein 
dwelleth righteousness. The upheavals and _ ine- 
qualities of history but mark the steps in the as- 
cending process of conforming the immature and 
unstable wills of men to the settled, wide-viewed will 
of God. 


XLIII. Harmony with God’s Will the Test of 
Social Ideals 


The chief anxiety borne through the portals of the 
opening century by thoughtful men will be to secure 
to every man all his rights. Despite the number of 
earnest students working at this problem, results are 
still fragmentary. All questions tend to become soci- 
ological, but we await an adequate science of Society. 
The belief that God is gradually manifesting himself 
in man, and that approach to the divine character is 
humanity’s bourn, is an idea at once single and uni- 
versal, capable of being wrought out into the unity 
and completeness of a social system. In the last 
analysis there can be but three basal doctrines of 
society: the elementary one in which individualism | 
absorbs all; the later one in which the individual 
succumbs to the machinery of the multitude’s welfare, 
and the state becomes all; and the final one in which 
the developing of the individual produces the institu- 
tions of social life. Each man’s individuality is an 
inalienable birthright through his inseparable oneness 
with God. To develop and mature this oneness, in 
the process of living out his life in its relations, is the 
meaning of man’s earthly existence and the will of 

I 


210 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


God concerning him, a will neither distant nor exter- 
nal, but near at hand, increasingly incarnate in man 
himself. 

From the individual to society is the order; but it 
is also to society through the individual. The princi- 
ple of social unity has been steadily gaining ground. 
The earlier prerogative of privileged classes has been 
counterbalanced by the recognition of political equal- 
ity ; it remains to secure the general acknowledgment 
that all social theories and industrial ameliorations 
find their guiding principle and promise of endurance 
in the well-being of man as man. This is the bar at 
which institutions, agencies, theories, must be tried 
and approved or condemned according as they make 
for or against his true advance. ‘The test,” says 
Amiel, “of every religious, political, or educational 
system is the man it makes.’”’ Nothing less nor other 
can permanently justify itself in experience. As a 
person, of. which the distinguishing feature is self- 
consciousness, man’s ideal of his ultimate good, how- 
ever imperfectly he may apprehend the particulars of 
its perfection, can find satisfaction in nothing short 
of a perfect, self-conscious life, and this can be secured, 
as he discovers in the endeavor to attain it, only as 
part of a larger social life in which the entire round 
of his own faculties may find fullest play in the vari- 
ous reciprocal activities which constitute the concrete 
working world. Thus the question, probably the most 
difficult in all ethics, “ How may the will of God be 
known in practical affairs?” is answered, as to gen- 
eral outline at least, in those very aims and endeavors 
through which men in their individual relations are 
constantly striving for a better condition in the vari- 


XII HARMONY WITH GOD’S WILL 211 


ous parts of the social body. The best, as the end 
toward which this desire for a better points, is found, 
not in forsaking, but in developing the institutions 
now embodying the social life. The ideal moral state 
is to be built up by those same internal forces which 
are now constructing the actual state in the course of 
producing righteousness, peace, and unity. These are 
known and unmistakable in daily operation among us. 

There is still need, however, of just such a science 
of social relations as Thomas Arnold once proposed 
to work out from this point of view, showing how 
knowledge of man’s end would explain the action 
and reaction between individuals whose relations con- 
stitute social life. Only thus shall we see how the 
various social and moral forces, ascending from the 
grotesque customs and restraints of savagery up to 
those ethical codes which govern and direct society 
in its most advanced stages, influence men in the 
degree to which their capacities unfold, while the 
consciousness that God is reproducing himself in 
men by means of these reciprocal activities between 
themselves endows each man with a transcendent 
dignity and worth. 

In a society composed of members whose individu- | 
ality it is so essential to preserve, the chief corner- 
stone of any practicable ideal of social reorganization 
will be justice, not formal justice merely, but justice 
in the lofty sense which it already bears in Justinian: 
Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas suum cuique 
tribuendt,— the steady and abiding will to give to 
each man what belongs to him. Right for all is 
the will of the Righteous. The poor man is to 
have his due as well as the rich; the rich, no less 


212 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


than the poor. Rights are relative to duties, and 
both are subject to the end of man’s being, activity 
in accord with perfect virtue. The security which 
the individual claims from society, and the authority 
which society asserts over the individual, have their 
common ground in the necessity of these relations 
as the condition under which a man may accomplish 
his life-task. The interests of mankind may demand 
sacrifices from all ranks, but these same interests 
demand proportionality of rights and duties. If they 
demand equality for equal, they with no less insist- 
ence demand inequality for unequal men. Every 
other limitation is arbitrary. The ends of the social 
and the individual organism are the same, freedom ; 
the only path to freedom is obedience to the moral 
law. Liberty and morality are one. No lesson of all 
the past has been more often reiterated than the fatal 
folly of abandoning the right to pursue the politic. 
“For,” says the Greek poet in Agamemnon, “for 
black Erinnys, in time, by a reverse of fortune, will 
rub down into obscurity the man who is prosperous 
without being righteous.”” Civic and national right- 
eousness is as essential as personal. Li Hung Chang, 
a propos of anti-Chinese legislation in the United 
States, declared: “A government that enacts iniquity 
is no government’’; and we must confess to having 
been taught the basal truth of politics by one whom 
we call heathen. 

It is not unjust favor any more than pity or charity 
that those who labor ask, only justice. Equality also 
they do not demand. That must be won; it can neither 
be given nor withheld. They do, however, ask for 
equity. This, society is becoming unwilling longer to 


xII HARMONY WITH GOD’S WILL 213 


withhold, because it is beginning to recognize that 
the complete fulfilment of his capabilities constitutes 
man’s ultimate well-being, and that by its tendency 
to aid or to hinder him in realizing his true self every 
social theory, custom, rule, or condition is justified 
or condemned. Natural right and social expediency 
unite to vindicate Lieber’s pregnant conclusion, ‘I 
am a man; therefore I have the right to be a man.” 
Simple truism as this statement seems, it carries 
within it the demand for reconstruction of society 
on far different lines than are usually laid down. 
That neither the more nor the less advanced classes 
recognize the principle here involved is plainly shown 
by the different theories put forth in the name of a 
desire to benefit humanity. These do not exhibit 
that profound estimate of man’s moral nature nor 
show that respect for the inalienable worth of per- 
sonality, which are prerequisites to framing an art of 
living that shall conserve the individual’s right to the 
development of his own manhood, and at the same 
time recognize that his separate development is con- 
ditioned upon the development of the social whole. 
No matter how revolutionary the program, if it 
leaves the man unchanged, it cannot permanently . 
better his estate. The inexorable logic of nature 
condemns to sterility most proposed radical reforms, 
because they seek to bring the conditions of success 
down to the present level of mankind, instead of 
laboring to bring mankind as a whole up to the con- 
ditions of success. The impracticability of Anarchy 
does not lie in the radical character of its proposi- 
tions, but in the fact that its inauguration would 
necessitate at the outset a fully developed manhood, 


214 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


one capable of self-government. Meantime, however, 
this fully developed manhood, in the very process of 
becoming such, has built up out of its unfolding per- 
sonality the order and authority of the state. Per- 
haps but few of the extreme radicals have sufficiently 
grasped the significance of this forecast by Frederick 
Engels: “The proletariat seizes political power and 
turns the means of production into state property. 
But, in doing this, 2¢ abolishes itself as proletariat.” 
Thus the Anarchy of Kropotkine, in reducing the 
political and financial struggle of humanity to the two 
tendencies toward greater freedom from authority and 
a more equitable distribution of material goods, does 
no more than anticipate the time when the organi- 
zations of men will so far obey the inner law of right 
that external government will have little place, and 
the strong, in obedience to the altruistic impulse, 
shall bear willingly the burdens of the weak. 
Desirable and welcome though this state of things 
will be, when it comes as the gradual product of an 
expanding sense of mutual relationship and a growing 
consciousness of kind, yet Communism, as a compul- 
sorily adopted basis of a new order of things, is no 
less inherently impossible than Anarchy. Proudhon 
sealed its condemnation when he wrote: “Com- 
munism is inequality, but not as property is. Prop- 
erty is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. 
Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the 
weak.’ Even more when carried to its extreme con- 
clusions in Nihilism, as represented by Bakunin, this 
enforced equality in goods and status contradicts that 
justice which is the only rock in whose shadow can 
rest and safety be found. It is an attempt to base a 


XII HARMONY WITH GOD’S WILL 215 


social order upon the negation of that very fraternity 
from which society springs. The evangel of a per- 
fect personality as the true end of human life ex- 
cludes the gospel of an artificial communism no less 
than the gospel of a vicious egoism. A true love for 
men prizes manhood too highly to dissipate it in the 
indistinguishable sea of a communistic horde, any 
more than it would petrify it in a self-absorbed indi- 
vidualism. 

Under the broad name of Socialism group and 
flourish a multitude of theories of society and pro- 
grams for realizing these various social ideals, most 
of them emphasizing the rule of the state as control- 
ling the citizen in the acquisition and employment of 
wealth. So far as it anticipates a forcible substitu- 
tion of public for private ownership and adminis- 
tration of a common stock, it is contrary to man’s 
best interests because subordinating personality to 
material gain. It violates Kant’s preserving caution> 
“Always treat humanity, whether in yourself or 
another, as a person, and never as a thing,” and is 
impracticable because presupposing the very condi- 
tion which it seeks to prevent. Whatever of clamor 
this form of socialism may raise, there is no danger. 
to be feared, since before it can become sufficiently 
practical to become general, it must necessarily ac- 
quire just those qualities which will render it harm- 
less. 

There are, however, certain influences at work 
among men which so manifestly conduce to man’s true 
end that they are clearly in accord with the will of God 
concerning man. Among these is the movement for 
shorter hours of labor. For a man requires first of 


216 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


all such leisure from grinding toil or strenuous occu- 
pation as shall permit him to develop his human 
qualities. Vast multitudes are still shut out from 
the possibility of becoming real human beings at all, 
by a dead wall of misery and weariness. When all 
available energy is necessarily employed in feeding 
the body, what wonder that the higher faculties suffer 
neglect ? This is equally inevitable, whether the sub- 
ject be slave in‘a sweat-shop or employer hounded into 
ceaseless activity by the fierce competitive methods 
of the business world. For this reason, shorter hours 
of work are a prime necessity for the right of the 
workman to be a man, and the movement to secure 
them justifies itself as in keeping with the divine 
intent by increasing the manhood of the worker to 
such an extent that on the whole more and better 
work is accomplished in eight hours than in a longer 
day. 

Cooperation is another line of development along 
which humanity has evidently a long and prosperous 
course to run. Even now this principle, though dis- 
guised under many forms, appears able to give advo- 
cates of all systems what they really desire as fast 
as men themselves are able to apply its principles. 
Humanity will search out new courses for its activi- 
ties, and the*tendency is more and more toward the 
spontaneous uniting of individuals in a freely chosen 
cooperation for the more effective accomplishment of 
some common purpose. The whole present develop- 
ment, — increasing centralization in the state, larger 
organization in means of communication, the uni- 
versal tendency to form large industries, as well as 
mechanical concentration in general, the association 


XII HARMONY WITH GOD’S WILL 217 


of workmen in large bodies, and their growing un- 
manageableness by private employers, —all these 
point to a time when, by the gradual leading up of 
the results of past civilization to wider and higher 
accomplishments, there shall be ushered in a much 
more socialized method of industrial and political life 
than prevails at present. Both society and the indi- 
vidual are contributing largely to this result already. 
Society is educating all its members; conducting 
public affairs, hospitals, charities, sanitation ; provid- 
ing water, parks, postal service, and many similar 
things. Individuals, or, more often, great semi-public 
corporations, conduct mammoth enterprises that cover 
the globe in their extent and affect the well-being of 
entire races. All this is working to the same end — 
common effort for the common good. With such 
large portions of humanity in their care, those who 
are responsible for these operations are learning to 
respond to the moral accountability which goes with 
this mighty power. 

The growth of man is making these things possible, 
and in carrying on these mutual endeavors he is learn- 
ing many of the larger lessons of his life. He begins 
to comprehend that individual well-being is in and 
through the well-being of the community; that 
altruism is not a sentiment merely, but a hard scien- 
tific necessity and the inexorable condition of egoistic 
success. The individual virtues, — honesty, industry, 
thrift, temperance, and enterprise, — however essential 
to the individual’s personal character and therefore 
true success, do not insure his getting on in the 
world. Society has become so complex and so much 
depends upon the relations of the individual with 


218 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


others, and the interdependence is so great, that only 
by linking his interests with others’ will one prosper. 
The great enterprises which call upon the vast ener- 
gies and resources of nature and cover the earth in 
their extension make a proportionate demand upon 
human fellowship, so that no one can achieve the 
greatest results for himself without the wide and 
generous cooperation of his kind. Inasmuch as there 
is necessarily codperation in utilizing the dynamic 
forces, and the vital energies, and the larger spiritual 
meanings of nature, there is also a just claim for 
equitable distribution of the benefits resulting from 
this joint activity. Thus the will of God for man’s 
common good is being revealed to him in the ordinary 
experiences of his life — spiritual meanings blossom- 
ing on the hard and thorny stem of practical affairs. 
God speaks to men in the exigencies of business, and 
commands attention in the warehouse and counting- 
room to truths that often go unheeded in the sanctu- 
ary. 

Out of this reciprocal dependence of the individual 
and society upon each other, sundry unexpected and 
important consequences spring. In proportion as the 
man improves, his value to himself and to society 
increases. On the other band, a large proportion of 
every community is held back by the non-ethical con- 
duct of those who cannot yet rise to the conception 
of a common interest. This is not less true where 
the connection cannot be directly traced. Whole 
cities and commonwealths are wronged, perhaps for 
generations, that a few who have the opportunity 
may dispose of valuable public franchises for personal 
gain ; millions of dollars worth of property evade the 


XII HARMONY WITH GOD’S WILL 219 


assessors, and thus reinforce the taxes upon what 
remains; vast watersheds are stripped of their 
timber, denuded of their soil, made barren forever, 
climates changed, rivers choked with the detritus, 
the water supply cut off from immense populations, 
and all that a few timber thieves may enrich them- 
selves from the public domain; a large army of 
tramps, strong, intelligent, and capable, are perma- 
nently withdrawn from productive labor and form pub- 
lic burdens in every country, throwing the cost of 
their support upon the working community, that they 
may eat the bread of idleness and ease ; labor organi- 
zations demand the same wages for their most incom- 
petent as for their most competent members, thus 
setting a premium upon mediocrity; the employés of 
large concerns and of the public perform their duties 
in a perfunctory and careless manner which, while 
seemingly injuring no one in particular, augments 
the cost and hence lowers the wages or increases 
the taxes of all; the lives of many persons are heart- 
lessly placed in jeopardy by defective materials in 
building — to spare the contractor’s purse, — or faulty 
workmanship — to spare the plumber trouble. 

This lack of moral development everywhere, and 
not the antagonism of any particular class, constitutes 
the chief difficulty in that great problem of the world 
—labor. The workman’s enemies are those of his 
own household, even more than those without. All 
barbers must work on Sundays, because a few will ; 
some employés eagerly cast away their opportunities of 
leisure for the few pence gained by overwork, con- 
sequently, all must consent to overtime or discharge ; 
the well-to-do young woman works for pin money 


220 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. XII 


and occupation, therefore all women who need wages 
must compete with the amateur army of those who 
amuse themselves, with little regard to the amount 
received; ignorant and selfish parents needlessly ex- 
ploit the wife’s and children’s labors to increase in- 
come, and the result is that all the family of many 
workmen must labor for their own support. 

Wise words, and increasingly significant as power 
falls more and more into the hands of the whole 
people, are these of John Stuart Mill: ‘To their 
own qualities must now be commended the care of 
their destiny. Modern nations will have to learn the 
lesson, that the well-being of a people must exist by 
means of the justice and self-government . . . of the 
individual citizens.” Social intercourse is steadily 
bringing to consciousness the moral forces within 
man and unfolding the moral relations within which 
he constantly moves. All social remedies wait upon 
higher moral ideas in men; even the corrective in- 
fluences now at work will gain in efficiency as men 
grow morally better. The will of God will be known 
and done in the commonwealth in proportion as each 
of its members achieves the true end of his own being 
through conformity to that which eternally zs, the 
character of God; and the methods of reformers and 
the schemes of agitators will justify themselves and 
be beneficent and permanent just so far as their 
effect is to bring this about most speedily and uni- 
versally. 


CHAPTER XIII 
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD 


XLIV. The Cry for Bread 


THE prayer for bread is universal. The world is 
horrified when an entire nation falls into the abyss of 
famine; it seldom realizes how many hang daily over 
the edge. In lands most advanced in material comfort 
there is always a large proportion in constant danger 
of death from lack of bodily food. 

Every large city has its submerged tenth, and 
throughout the country a submerged twentieth suffers 
the pangs of hunger. The struggle for life, which 
existence means to the greater number of mankind, 
is more than half made up of the struggle for food. 
This item alone absorbs sixty-two per cent of the 
people’s wages in Germany; in England, nearly as 
much; in the United States, somewhat more. Lon- 
don is little, if any, worse off than Paris, Berlin, 
Vienna, New York, or Chicago. It has merely hada 
Booth to analyze and exhibit the condition of its needy 
population. Even his figures and percentages convey 
a very imperfect notion of the state of multitudes 
among those nine hundred thousand residents of East 
London, thirty-five per cent of whom Charles Booth 
classes as ‘the poor, and very poor.’”’ In American 
and European cities alike many honest and industrious 
families prolong death on the scantiest income be: 

221 


222 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


cause, do what they will, they cannot increase it. 
Never a winter but respectable persons, cultured, 
refined, of irreproachable character, in the great 
centres of wealth and population, perish of starvation. 
In the Old World or the New, the sad tale is heart- 
breaking in its piteous frequency. The records of 
charitable societies, relief agencies, and friendly visi- 
tors tell how “A widow, with seven children,” or 
“A mother, with six children and a husband on his 
death-bed,” or “An old couple, formerly in good cir- 
cumstances,” are trying to keep life in their bodies 
and a roof overhead with “four dollars and a quarter,” 
“two dollars and seventy cents,” or “five dollars and 
thirty cents a week.” Just a little added burden, a 
few days’ sickness for the worker, a brief failure of 
the scanty income, and this family falls to a lower 
level, and another shelterless group is upon the 
street. | 
The words of William Booth are too true: “There 
is a depth below that of the dweller in the slums. It 
is that of the dweller in the streets, who has not even 
a lair in the slums which he may call his own.” 
Strong and willing’men sleep under the open sky, 
from the cold stones of the Thames Embankment 
through Europe and around again; and in the Great 
Republic, also, the same sad tale is true. Thousands 
of hunger-bitten children suffer in the public schools 
of America and Europe, glad of warmth and shelter, 
y even though in want of food. Oh, the abject, griev- 
ous misery of the poor! The wan, pinched faces of 
the children! The hollow-eyed, worn, pitiful mothers! 
The pathetic, hungry animal-look in the appealing 
eyes of men fighting the gaunt wolf of famine back 


XII BREAD AND TO SPARE 223 


day by day from their loved ones! The dumb, hope- 
less resignation of those worn out battered wrecks who 
get a precarious loaf or bowl of soup at the cheap 
kitchen, or scramble for the scant and bitter crust of 
charity! From how many of our fellow-men rises 
daily to the All-Father the agonizing petition, Lord, » 
give us this day our daily bread ! 


XLV. Bread and to Spare 


The saddest feature of this immense aggregate of 
suffering is that it is needless, and the pathos of this 
non-sequence is accentuated by the juxtaposition of 
direst want and most extravagant plenty. “In the 
shadow of overflowing elevators and of packing-houses 
that send forth food for a continent, little ones go to 
bed supperless, and in the termini of great railroads 
that stretch out through regions which wait only the 
developing hand of labor to become new centres of 
wealth and power, able-bodied men in hordes vainly 
seek for work, and haunt station-houses for a sleep- 
ing-place and search garbage heaps for food. 

It is of course but a superficial solution of this 
unhappy problem to pile up statistics, showing the 
enormous aggregates of national wealth and the 
comfortable sums which an equal fer capita distri- 
bution would give to each person in the civilized 
world. Such a dispersion of capital is not feasible, 
and even if feasible, it were not wise. And yet there 
is light upon the difficulty in the fact that the present 
visible wealth of the United States, if evenly divided, 
would give to each person of its seventy millions 
some eleven hundred dollars, or the not insignificant 
working capital of between five thousand and six 


224 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


thousand dollars for each family of five persons. The 
wealth of the United Kingdom would give to its 
inhabitants two-thirds as much again. It is not 
from lack of resources in these countries at large 
to feed their citizens that so many starve within their 
borders. Still, considered by itself, this means but 
little, since the portion of this sum-total available 
for consumption would scarcely feed these common- 
wealths a single year. The value of such a showing 
lies chiefly in the fact that so large and general a 
surplus is possible under present social conditions. 

Of much greater importance is the fact that the 
rate of increasing wealth is steadily accelerated. 
The present century has seen an advance in the 
powers of production unparalleled in any previous 
period. The accumulation of wealth has outstripped 
the most sanguine expectations ; and this is equally 
true whether population has remained stationary, as 
practically in France, or increased yapidly by immi- 
gration, as in the United States. In the latter half 
of the century, in both Europe and America, wealth 
has increased three times as fast as population. 
Machinery has multiplied man’s productive power 
until, as Huxley said, the seven and a half million 
of workers in England can produce as much in six 
months as one hundred years ago would have required 
the entire working force of the world one year to 
equal. It is now estimated that less than one-half 
the manual labor is required to produce the same 
amount of subsistence as twenty years ago. These 
representative figures tend at least to show that 
the general wealth of every reasonably well-governed 
country not only increases much more rapidly than 


XIII BREAD AND TO SPARE 225 


the population, but that it increases more rapidly 
from year to year. 

There is further proof of the divine provision, that 
man shall not suffer from lack of food, in the exhaust- 
less resources of the soil—resources which have 
scarcely been touched as yet. Improved methods 
of cultivation, more general use of irrigation, the 
reclaiming of marsh and lowlands by systematic 
draining, will give great additions to the arable ter- — 
ritory of the world. Almost limitless, however, is 
the possible addition to our food supply through 
application of greater intelligence to the develop- 
ment of the different edible grains and vegetables. 
Man’s inventive power, directed to the vegetable 
kingdom, involves nothing less than a transformation 
of the whole range of agriculture and horticulture 
through the working of the intellect upon the laws 
of vegetable life. Not the natural fertility of the soil, 
but its rational culture, is the principal element in 
the food supply of the future. It is not a question of 
area or fertility, but of man’s control of the forces of 
nature —a control which increases with the increase 
of human knowledge. Since man’s power to con- 
sume is limited, and the possibility of his production 
almost limitless, that very density of population which 
the Malthusian philosophy foresaw with such dread 
is to be really the antecedent condition of a cheaper 
and more abundant sustenance, since in the new 
methods a large and constant demand will make 
possible an abundant and cheap supply. 

The problem of production has been solved. The 
stock of potential energy being almost infinite, as the 
means of availing ourselves of that energy increases 

Q 


226 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


and are perfected, the comfort of mankind will in- 
crease. Already the application of steam to industry 
has achieved results which are the equivalent of set- 
ting sixty slaves at work for every family, or six times 
as many as were allowed by law to a family in ancient 
Athens; sixty days’ labor of one man is reckoned suf- 
ficient to supply goods for the support of one family 
a year. A more general application of electricity, 
energy derived directly from solar radiation, imme- 
diate transformation of the latent energy of coal 
into electricity, the conversion of the Roentgen 
rays directly into light without heat, thus increas- 
ing, results a million fold, these are some of the 
doors into the great storehouse of nature’s forces 
which science considers herself just about to open. 
If her hopes shall prove well founded, the sinews of 
man will be practicably released from the drudgery 
of toil and the productive capacity of the world’s 
population multiplied beyond imagination. 

Most hopeful, however, of all sources of future 
plenty in material supply for the race is the pro- 
spective improvement of man himself. The value of 
the person is the largest element of a country’s assets. 
Adam Smith aptly puts it, “The wealth of a country 
is its sons.” This is an actual fixed capital to the 
country at large, at the same time that it is a patri- 
mony distributed to the several individuals with 
measurably accurate reference to personal right ; 
for the income —the salary or the wages —of each 
represents merely the annual interest upon the capi- 
tal value of the person. This value is capable of 
steady and unlimited increase. The history of 
humanity is the record of such gradual development 


XI BREAD AND TO SPARE 227 


from lower to higher organization, not always in 
regular, but still with certain, advance. Through suc- 
cessive cycles and epochs “upwards steals the life of 
man,’ till in every land the people are more intelli- 
gent, more free, and enjoy more rights. 

Three great factors codperate in the production of 
the world’s supply. The first of these is mind. The 
animal produces nothing until he becomes man. Mind 
is the source of all progress and advantage. It is 
therefore primary in the process of fortune-building 
and of provision for the supply of needs beyond the 
present hour. The second factor is muscle. It is 
not primary in the task of production, as many stren- 
uously assert. Still, brawn is the instrument by 
which brain builds its habitation. The third element 
essential to a people’s welfare is materials. These 
God gives to brain as fast as it can take them; and 
as fast as brain sees their value and discovers how to 
use them, it sets brawn to the task of transforming 
them from lifeless ore and dead stocks and stones 
into objects of use and beauty. The sum total of 
human arts are the channels through which the race 
utilizes the materials and forces of nature. The 
marvellous progress of inventive science makes the 
last half or three-quarters of a century appear as if 
in that period almost all that tends to man’s real 
material comfort has been produced. Thus the 
application of mind to man’s conditions has already 
gone far to realize the socialistic ideal, as stated by 
William Morris: “First, a healthy body; second, 
an active mind in sympathy with the past, the 
present, and the future; thirdly, occupation fit for 
a healthy body and an active mind; and, fourthly, a 


228 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


beautiful world to live in.” The fuller development 
of mankind in higher qualities means at the same 
time a more perfect satisfaction of his bodily wants. 
As manhood increases, wants assume greater individ- 
uality. The great proportion of production may be 
given over to machinery. Routine wants may be 
satisfied by routine effort; but individual wants, 
only by individual activity. Art will take its place 
above manufacture. 


XLVI. Give ye them to Eat 


How may this abundance be equitably divided, and 
the pangs of this hunger appeased? The answer is 
not one that may be left with a pious complacency 
to God. He distributes his bounty to men mainly 
through human hands; Gzve ye them to eat. How to 
give effect to this command is the one question into 
which all others run. The problem before society 
to-day —the problem of which relations of labor and 
capital, of state and individual, of handicapped and 
irresponsible classes, are but subordinate parts — is 
distribution. 

There is yet much opportunity for an. improved 
balance in the apportionment of the property and 
income of the commonwealth between its various 
members. If many of the methods proposed for 
raising the depressed classes cannot abide the ethical 
test, still less can many features of the present social 
system. Private luxury and public want is neither 
civilization nor Christianity. There is a hopeful sign 
of better things in the disposition of so many to echo 
the question which John Stuart Mill somewhere asks, 
‘“Who does not abhor your millions as he sees the 


XIII GIVE YE THEM TO EAT 229 


weeping, ragged children lying at night upon the 
cold pavements of the Strand itself and of Lombard 
SLreSe iy 

Nearly half the families of the United States own 
the real estate they occupy, yet seven-eighths of the 
families possess but one-eighth of the national wealth, 
while one per cent of the families hold more property 
than the remaining ninety-nine per cent. One-eighth 
of the families receive more than half the aggregate 
income, the richest one per cent receiving a larger 
income than the poorest fifty per cent. The wealthi- 
est one per cent receive from property alone as large 
an income as half the entire population receive from 
property and labor combined. More than three- 
fourths of the people of Great Britain and Ireland 
are without any registered property whatever, own- 
ing nothing but their household goods. In these 
countries less than two per cent of the families hold 
about three times as much private property as all the 
remainder, and ninety-three per cent of the people 
hold less than eight per cent of the accumulated 
wealth. It is evident, therefore, that the vast wealth 
of these nations does not bring a fair share of comfort, 
culture, and independence to the rank and file of their 
citizens. Political economy has not yet attained its 
ideal, ““To each according to his wants, from each 
according to his ability.” 

This unhappy inequality has one encouraging feat- 
ure in that it is a condition chiefly within the control 
of humanity itself. It depends partially upon indi- 
vidual qualities, but much more upon social institu- 
tions. There is no “iron law” fixing the laborer’s 
wages at the minimum of existence; nor is there a 


230 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


pampering Providence, arbitrarily to augment the 
profits of capital. The distribution of wealth, to a 
considerable degree, is under the control of laws for 
which the national conscience is responsible. What 
are economic institutions but the product of human 
actions, customs, and laws? ‘The position of social 
classes in general is predetermined largely by these 
institutions. This brings them within the circle of 
ethical requirements, and permits us to inquire 
whether they and their effects are just or unjust. 
The first requisite for a solution of this modern 
Sphynx’s riddle is intelligence, not only as regards 
present conditions, but also of those inexorable uni- 
versal laws which modify accumulation and distribu- 
tion of material goods. Below man, the individual 
animal or plant carries on its growth and specific 
functions only on conditions of strict obedience to 
the requirements of that environment from which 
it derives its existence. In human society, that well- 
being which is possible for the compound whole may 
be proportionately shared by each individual only in 
conformity to such a system of production and distri- 
bution as consists with the attainment of the common 
end through obedience to general rules. With this 
in mind, a dispassionate examination of the facts as 
they are will disabuse one’s mind of much false and 
exaggerated theory. 

The first thing to attract attention in such a com- 
prehensive survey is the steady, proportional improve- 
ment in the condition of the multitude. Moderate 
fortunes and incomes are increasing more rapidly 
than the larger possessions of the very rich. The 
working-classes have been steadily securing to their 


XIII GIVE YE THEM TO EAT 231 


own use and enjoyment an increasing proportion of 
an increasing product; while the richer classes, con- 
trolling and using capital, are securing a diminish- 
ing proportion of the same product. The workman 
has gained, in increased wages and reduced prices 
together, from seventy to one hundred per cent in the 
last fifty years. To the great body of people, neither 
to the extremely rich nor to the extremely poor, 
has this enormous material improvement of ‘the last 
half century fallen. In thinking of the aggregate 
wealth of the country, men think vaguely of the vast 
sum which represents the total savings of the past, 
not realizing how large a proportion of that fund is 
locked up in trust for posterity and the poor in the 
form of public schools, parks, roads, river and harbor 
improvements, fire and police protection, churches, 
almshouses, jails, colleges, libraries, museums, and a 
thousand other institutions which minister to the 
safety, comfort, and well-being of high and low alike. 
The working capital of the community is only that 
product of past labor which it has been able to set 
aside from present needs. 

Labor and capital are partners in securing the 
common welfare. When either disappears, the firm — 
is dissolved. Labor taking a ton of ore from the 
ground and transforming it into iron gives to it a 
value of fifty dollars; that iron converted into steel 
and wrought into delicate dentist’s tools or watch 
springs is increased several thousand fold; but in 
producing this result the skill and machinery which 
enter into the product are at least as important and 
valuable as the labor. It is estimated by careful 
statisticians that a factory averages one thousand 


232 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


dollars capital for every workman employed. A plant 
furnishing occupation to one thousand men involves 
a capital of one million dollars. Not capital alone, 
nor labor alone; but both, massed, disciplined, con- 
centrated, and intelligently directed, operating to- 
gether, like the infantry and artillery of an army — 
that wins industrial success. | 

Wealth is not a fixed quantity, that what the rich 
gain must be taken from the poor. The total wealth 
of the United States in 1850 equalled $308.00 per 
capita; in 1860, $514.00 per capita; in 1870, $780.00 
per capita; in 1880, $870.00 per capita ; and in 1890, 
$1036.00 per capita. Aside altogether from the 
question, — which must be answered negatively, — 
whether the poor get their due proportion of the in- 
creased aggregate wealth, it is evident that they have 
not been growing poorer while others have grown 
rich. During this period also, while the total of wealth 
has increased most rapidly, its distribution among 
the people, as shown by its consumption in the form 
of better food, better houses, better furniture, better 
clothing, better education, better financial condition, 
has been most marked. 

Weare only beginning to understand that consump- 
tion is the dynamics of wealth. Desires are the motive 
forces of the economic world, their varying numbers, 
intensities, and forms shape the activities of men 
and the myriad phases of industry and trade. The 
great defect of many social theories is that they over- 
look the important principle, that distribution of wealth 
must be so effected as not to sacrifice production 
itself in the process. This may best be done by 
stimulating the consuming power of the masses of the 


XIII GIVE YE THEM TO EAT 233 


people. In any well-balanced industrial society pro- 
duction and consumption will appear as the obverse 
and reverse of the same organic relation; for a justly 
ordered life requires that the intake shall balance the 
output of wholesome energy. In the light of this 
truth it may be found needful in the name of a higher 
economic science to revise some of the prudential 
maxims of earlier days. Hoarding may easily be 
carried to such an extreme that this excellent virtue 
becomes a vice. Consumption itself, however, needs 
to be elevated to a higher plane in order that expen- 
diture may be for things of more permanent value, 
and, so far as possible, for objects of social utility 
and of individual character. If we may accept the 
saying, ‘‘ Life without work is guilt, work without art 
is brutality,” we shall find that in proportion as our 
tastes require us to put our sense of beauty and fit- 
ness, as well as our vital force, into whatever we do, 
and demand these same elements in that which we 
enjoy, the economic condition of a perfect society 
will be attained. Inability to attain to individualized 
wants confines the consumer to common products, 
easily multiplied and definitely limited in the quantity 
that can be utilized. Every advance in civilization 
requires a more equitable diffusion of wealth and 
welfare among the masses of mankind. Every force 
which stimulates distribution without checking pro- 
duction is a positive aid to human progress, and every 
increase in the welfare of the people is through in- 
telligence to make the best use of materials at hand. 

Intelligence, then, after all needful deduction is 
made for the material necessities of food, clothing, 
and shelter, holds the chief place in the people’s need, 


234 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


and its diffusion is the principal factor in the problem 
of distribution. Judged by salaries paid for superin- 
tendence and direction in industrial enterprises, the 
intelligence capable of something more than processes 
of memory and routine is still far short of the demand. 
Including the incomes of professional men, business 
managers, and men of such position, labor in the 
United States is found to receive three-fifths of the 
present products of industry, and capital two-fifths. 
How much of that three-fifths is lost from lack of 
knowledge to use it to the best advantage! With 
more than fifty per cent, in many instances as high 
as seventy-five per cent, of income spent for food, due 
mainly to lack of skill in buying and wasteful methods 
in cooking, the poor are inevitably kept poor. Waste 
is the measure of possible additions to present com- 
fort with present income. The application of suf- 
ficient thought to the matter of saving in food and 
fuel, by more economical buying and cooking of food, 
would add to the nation’s resources annually a sum 
greater than the total expenditures of the government. 
This recklessness is not among the poor only, nor 
chiefly. The poor.in our cities might be abundantly 
fed by the waste of the rich, could it be collected and 
distributed. But waste in the palace means hunger 
in the hovel. Lazarus always suffers at Dives’ gate. 

One pronounced advantage in the view-point from 
which God’s relations to the world are coming to be 
regarded, is the effect which it will have upon the 
popular theory and attitude toward work. So long 
as work is regarded as a curse, it is not strange that 
many feel the necessity of daily labor, in order that 
one may eat bread, to be a badge of inferiority, and 


XIII GIVE YE THEM TO EAT 235 


a life of luxurious idleness the thing chiefly to be 
desired. But when we recognize in the setting of this 
Biblical statement the method by which ease-loving 
Orientals accounted for the unwelcome condition and 
necessity of labor, and remember that in reality this is 
a preéminent phase of the great law of ascent, laid 
alike upon the lowest animal form and the highest 
spiritual qualities, it becomes a badge of honor. It will 
materially modify the common estimate of work and 
the workman to get well out from under the idea that 
this is the badge and memorial of sin, a life sentence 
for humanity to hard labor as the just reward of ill 
desert, and to grasp the idea that it is the divine 
privilege and open sesame by which man has let him- 
self into all the riches of modern life. Work is not a 
curse, but a benediction. In the eighteen years that 
Jesus wrought in the carpenter shop of Nazareth, 
we see all lowly but needful service spiritualized and 
glorified. 

All proposed methods of ae distribution 
must be brought for a final hearing, not to the 
economical, but to an ethical, bar. Time will in- 
evitably demonstrate that in the social expansion of 
humanity whatever is not right is, in the long run, 
impossible. We have not to deal with inert materials | 
nor with abstract principles, but we are to think out 
the concrete problems of social dynamics as the retir- 
ing generation thought out the problem of material 
forces. In the struggle to obtain the full measure of 
what belongs in justice to the individual, it is essen- 
tial above all to secure that liberty wherein individu- 
ality consists. It is not less necessary to resist all 
external forces, be they institutions, organizations, or 


236 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


forms of thought which would circumscribe this free- 
dom, than it is to open the soul to personal forces 
which tend to expand and liberalize, in order that 
narrowness may give place to breadth and isolation 
to identification with the social whole. The law of 
solidarity is inevitable and universal. Given freedom 
of adjustment, and each factor of the body politic will 
find its proper place with the same certainty that the 
atoms of the physical body gravitate to theirs. This 
sense of the organic oneness of humanity is a power- 
ful constructive force which is influencing our con- 
ceptions of the relations of men to each other, and 
modifying their reciprocal actions to such a degree 
that it is changing not only the conditions of human- 
ity, but humanity itself. 

This profound notion of the unity, into which the 
successive generations and all races are bound, un- 
covers the deeper meanings of our social history and 
interprets the struggles and the sufferings of the race. 
As we trace its beneficent workings through the ages, 
it reveals the vicarious fellowship in which all men 
are held, and discloses the sacrificial element which 
works forever in the, heart of God from whom human- 
ity springs. The student of social forces finds that 
in order to understand his own time he must consider 
not only the influences by which the machinery of 
our present social condition has been shaped, but 
also the opinions and actions which have developed 
the character of the man of to-day. The advantages 
of this race unity are in a measure recognized; its 
obligations are more commonly overlooked. Human- 
ity is one; therefore its most progressive races and 
portions are tethered to the slowest. The high are 


XIII GIVE YE THEM TO EAT 237 


still kept down by the low. Mankind cannot rise, 
except as all rise together. While a certain freedom 
of action is possible to the individual, yet each one’s 
life, ideals, and attainments are largely determined 
by those which prevail about him. 

This race oneness, shining through the defects and 
discouragements of the present, throws a rainbow of 
hope upon the future. The history of the centuries 
is the story of the political and social enfranchise- 
ment of the people. Among the old written con- 
tracts, exhumed from the ruins of Babylon, is one by 
which a laborer hired himself to work three months 
for one and one-half shekels of silver, eighty-two 
cents of our money, supplemented by six and three- 
fourths bushels of meal and about two gallons of oil. 
Another laborer, one Ijudahum, worked still cheaper ; 
he hired for four and a half shekels of silver, or two 
dollars and forty-nine cents a year. 

Michelet estimates that a general division of the 
value of the product of labor for one year preceding 
the French Revolution would have resulted in less 
than sixty-three centimes. It is stated by students 
of that period that under Le Grand Monarque the 
rural population of France wanted bread half the 
time, while under Louis XV. they were able to eat 
bread two days out of three. Property, the people 
had none. The peasantry were forced to eat the 
grass from the roadside and gnaw the bark from the 
trees. Versailles cost one hundred and twenty-six | 
million francs, and the rural population fought with 
the dogs for a bone. 

The last of the English serfs were freed as late as 
1574. Negro slavery was legal in England until 


238 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


1772, and in the United States till 1863. The con- 
dition of the British workman has, on the whole, 
immensely improved since Thomas Carlyle could 
write: ‘My own stone-mason father has dined on 
water and cresses, and I was myself a poor starveling 
in a peasant biggin.” In forty years, or between 
1850 and 1890, the annual value of manufactures 
for each operative in the United States rose from 
$1120.00 to $2117.00, or eighty per cent, and the aver- 
age of wages to workmen rose in the same time from 
$240.00 a year to $517.00, or one hundred and fifteen 
per cent, while during this same period all manufact- 
ured articles were greatly cheapened in price. 

The law of improvement indicated in the above 
facts is shown in manufacturing statistics throughout 
the world. The workingmen are to-day better housed, 
better fed, better clothed, have better education, and 
are more able to exercise the functions of man than 
in any period of the past. Unaided human labor 
could not provide the various articles which are in 
daily use in the cottages of the poor as well as in 
the stately mansions of the rich. Fifty years ago a 
barrel of flour produced in Illinois would have cost 
ten times its value for transportation to Boston. It 
can be carried now for $1.25. This class of benefits 
affects the laboring man vastly more than the rich 
employer of the present or the great landowner of 
former days. 

Not only in entire harmony with these improved 
conditions, but a further evidence of them, is the 
widespread unrest that prevails among the less com- 
fortably situated classes; for it is a well-nigh, if not 
wholly, universal law that dissatisfaction with condi- 


XIII GIVE YE THEM TO EAT 239 


tion increases as the condition improves. Opportu- 
nity is the occasion of unrest; men become most 
exacting when they feel there is a chance for better 
things. This is the reason for the apparent anomaly 
of greater improvement in the condition of working- 
men during the last half-century than in any five 
centuries previous, while that same half-century has 
seen the rise of the largest number and most deter- 
mined efforts for still greater privileges and opportu- 
nities. In so far, however, as the present order and 
existing institutions are the outgrowth of the nature 
of man, as it has unfolded in the process of history, 
they can neither be arbitrarily changed nor artificially 
replaced. 

Industrial improvement necessarily involves highly 
organized capital. Only with and through these 
higher forms of organization has the general social 
advancement of the present century come. All 
attempts, through appeals to social prejudice, to 
array the laboring class against the forces which in 
a single generation have nearly doubled their power 
to command the benefits of civilization, are social 
crimes. Competition will tend to work its own 
remedy in the formation of large trusts and corpora- 
tions in self-defence. Trusts, as the latest form of - 
concentrated capital, represent more fully than any- 
thing else the true nature of the economic movement. 
Aggregated capital is part and product of the world’s 
progress. Men will inevitably work together in 
larger and more closely related groups, and produc- 
tion will be on a larger and more economical scale. 
Unscrupulous men attempt, it is true, to engross the 
benefits of science and invention, but their success 


240 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


can be no more than temporary. The world’s whole 
movement is against them, a movement which nothing 
can stop. It is impossible permanently to monopolize 
any important line of industry. Public sentiment, 
which eventually is law, will hold toward the monopo- 
list the feeling which Plutarch records that Dionysius 
held towards one who had acquired a large sum of 
money by a monopoly of iron. He forbade him to 
continue any longer in Syracuse, “as being one who 
contrived means for getting money inconsistent with 
his interests.” The growth of man and of social con- 
ditions cannot long be cramped in any single hand. 
In all combinations of business the principle holds, 
no less than in mechanics, that every reduction of 
friction is a direct gain in the application of energy 
to the work in hand. No legislation can make it 
profitable to ignore that law, and nothing which 
ignores that law will ultimately succeed in holding 
its place by the side of other and more economic 
methods. The peculiar characteristic of civilized 
beings is their capacity for codperation; and like 
other faculties this tends to improve by practice, and 
becomes capable of constantly widening application. 
Accordingly there is no more certain element in the 
changes now taking place than the continued growth 
and widening application of the principle of codpera- 
tion in the social and industrial world. The whole 
lower part of the universe points to codperation as 
its end. The tendencies of the times are from inde- 
pendence to interdependence; from competition to 
combination, in the ranks both of wealth and of labor. 
Profit-sharing is an offer made to labor from the capi- 
talist’s side; codperation is a deeper principle, arising 


XI GIVE YE THEM TO EAT 241 


spontaneously from union of the two. Society is 
progressive, and the right of one age becomes the 
wrong of the next. The frequent complaint that law 
fosters abuses and favors capital and monopoly finds 
seeming justification in the fact that, in growing 
periods, the forms of civilization always lag behind 
the movements which they are unable either to 
interpret or contain. The legal principles of the 
eighteenth century are inadequate for the industrial 
conditions developed in the closing years of the 
nineteenth. The pools of to-day, however, are not 
creatures and pets of the law, as were the monopolies 
of past centuries or the guilds of the Middle Ages, 
but rise and grow strong in obedience to the modern 
demand for combination. 

There are survivals of feudal notions and relations 
in which lurk and hide very many of our most annoy- 
ing problems. Among these, is that notable case 
of unequal distribution, the unearned increment on 
lands held for speculative purposes. Unearned by 
the landowner, this increment has yet no fraction of 
added value which has not been earned by toil, by 
enterprise, by culture and progress, by everything 
that makes the difference between savage wilds and 
civilized society. The value thus given by the indus- » 
try and character of the community cannot always 
be absorbed by those who have contributed nothing 
thereto. The social element contributed by the com- 
monwealth will before long be taken into account, 
and this increased value redound to the advantage 
of those who in their organized capacity created it. 

Ability to manage large business enterprises is an 
element of productive capacity too commonly over- 

R 


242 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


looked or too cheaply regarded by wage-earners. 
The common assumption, in which too many econo- 
mists acquiesce, that the riches of the few are taken 
from the products of the many is really in strict truth 
to be reversed. There is little comparison between 
labor, or the energy put forth by one man directly 
upon a material object, and the ability by which a 
single man, through the putting forth of his energy, 
affects simultaneously the labor of many men. For 
this reason it were far nearer true to say that the 
present competence of the many has arisen from the 
products of the few. Proudhon cites the case of two 
hundred grenadiers who raised the obelisk of Luxor 
in a few hours, and asks whether one man could have 
accomplished this task in two hundred days. From 
this he argues that the employer receives as a gratu- 
ity the marginal result of combined effort on the part 
of his laborers, while he pays only as many times one 
day’s wage as he employs laborers per day. The 
combination itself, however, as well as the enhanced 
result, is the special contribution of the mind capable 
of converting a multitude of units into an organic 
unity and directing it to a definite end. This in- 
equality in men is a fact which cannot be anni- 
hilated by being ignored. It is a law of nature 
asserting itself regardless of humanity or of human 
theory. Equality, then, is only proportionate, and 
each member of society is justly treated when he is 
enabled to produce according to his faculties and to 
consume according to his wants. 

The inherent criticism of all schemes of social 
betterment based upon an artificial equality is that 
they propose to reduce all members of society to 


XI GIVE YE THEM TO EAT 243 


one dead level of mediocrity, whereas the method of 
nature is just the opposite. The further up develop- 
ment is carried, the greater the diversity. The 
realization of personality consists in the raising of 
the better faculties of the individual to their highest 
power. The notion of progress, so far, has been too 
largely material. It is likely to turn, and indeed 
signs are not lacking that it has already turned, to 
higher things. It is being recognized that, as lord 
of himself, a man has an indefeasible right to live out 
his own life as a man, and therefore has a just claim 
upon whatever is necessary to enable him to do that. 
All his rights spring from his personality. Inevi- 
tably, the distribution of wealth is largely affected 
by differences in men’s character and conduct. The 
spiritual is stronger than any material force; thought 
rules the world. Great men, says Emerson, are they 
who see this. The social problem is a condition to 
be lived through. Asa matter of personal relations, 
it is to be solved in terms of life. Because society 
in all its operations and activities consists of persons 
in relation to each other, there is no means of remov- 
ing frictions and misunderstandings except by better 
adjustment of the personal relations between the . 
different elements of the social cosmos — or chaos on 
its way to become a cosmos. Business conditions 
cannot, in the nature of things, continue forever as 
they are. With intelligence becoming common, 
as drudgery is laid more and more upon the iron 
shoulders of machinery, and labor gives place to 
leisure, and by living in freedom the mass of mankind 
learns to live and wisely use a free life, the rewards 
must inevitably be more equitably distributed, since 


244 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


the contributions to the common earnings will be 
more nearly equal. It will be acknowledged that a 
man has not daily bread, in any full Christian sense, 
until he is able to supply the wants of his higher 
nature and to exercise this higher nature in activity 
for the welfare of himself and others. 

There is quite general recognition of the fact 
that increased material prosperity accompanies every 
advance in the moral condition of a community. The 
other half of this truth is less observed, but is none 
the less real. Everything that diminishes general 
prosperity and beats every effort of individuals and 
communities down toward the physical level where 
the struggle is severe and constant to maintain even 
bodily existence, curtails by so much the energy 
and means available to higher uses. The efforts for 
social, intellectual, moral, and spiritual betterment of 
men that are forced to a standstill by depression in 
business and industry go beyond the imagination 
of any but those actually conversant with the facts, 
There is a vital relation between the material well- 
being in the general community and the possibility 
of its mental and spiritual uplifting. For this reason 
the moral advance of the working classes has gone 
on as the material condition of the workman has 
been improved by the introduction of machinery. 
The inventor who enables us to harness nature to 
our industries and compel her to do our drudgery, 
or rather to accept her standing offer to put her 
illimitable strength at our service, is placing a lever 
under humanity and slowly elevating the race. The 
growth thus brought within reach of men, as they are 
enabled to communicate across continents and seas, 


XIII GIVE YE THEM TO EAT 245 


—as they are enabled to drop the implements of 
manual toil for a larger portion of the day and take 
up the book or the pen,—as they are enabled to 
absorb the fruits of genius, of science, and of art, — 
as they are enabled to develop the higher nature and 
supplant the lower impulses by better and worthier 
motives and ideals, will make the progress of human- 
ity swifter and more assured. 

All property is raw material that has been shaped 
to use by intelligent skill. Wealth is the investiture 
of material things with personal qualities. The more 
personality, the greater the possibility of wealth. 
Where intelligence is low, the power of producing 
property is low. The world’s coal fields and ore beds 
were useless until mankind advanced sufficiently to 
use them. Civilization is knowledge applied to life. 
Knowledge of the mineral kingdom is turned into 
masonry, metallurgy, agriculture; knowledge of the 
vegetable kingdom is turned into cotton looms, horti- 
culture, carpentry ; knowledge of chemistry, electri- 
city, and similar forces is converted into power which 
makes one man, plus a machine, as strong as a thou- 
sand, and a hundred men in England as rich as a 
million in Arabia. 

Equality of property, however, is not the social 
goal. Every man does not need the same amount of 
money. The social goal is the equalization of oppor- 
tunity and privilege, and the elimination of social 
disadvantages which have hitherto grown out of in- 
equality of property. We are approaching a time, 
we have reason to hope, when the destitute poor and 
the unsocial rich alike shall disappear. Civilization 
may yet slough off penury as it has already sloughed 


246 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


off slavery ; it may outgrow the oppressing capitalist 
as it has outgrown the feudal lord, but it is not likely 
to attain equality of possessions for all men. The 
chief result of the emancipation of the masses of men 
from grinding bodily toil, which is the evident end 
of processes now visible, will be that there will be 
leisure. The resources of nature are ample; ma- 
chinery can develop them; the hours of labor may 
shorten ; life, the complete, perfect, harmonious de- 
velopment of self, the perfect man, may come, and the 
vast energies of humanity, accumulating thus a surplus 
of force not needed for material use, will furnish the 
mental, moral, and altruistic capital by which the less 
advanced shall be nourished by the higher. Time 
is the one great commodity. Fill that with higher 
values, and it will command any price and produce 
any result. Class privileges are already disappear- 
ing as the rear ranks deploy into line. They are 
moving up abreast of the foremost files. 

The distribution needed, then, to give every one 
his due includes intelligence and character as well as 
food and clothes and shelter. In order that the entire 
body politic may be healthful, this circulation must be 
complete. Each community will be truly live just to 
the extent that it develops this mutual exchange. 
Stop the blood in any member and it mortifies. 
Civilization is more than utilization of the forces of 
nature; it is more than a great literature and wide- 
spread education. It is thought for-the poor and 
suffering ; it is recognition of human brotherhood ; it 
is abhorrence of what is mean and cruel; it is devo- 
tion to the claims of justice. Social justice has only 
made a beginning when it gives a decent sustenance 


XIII GIVE YE THEM TO EAT 247 


to the toiler. It owes him sympathy, fellowship, 
that sacrament of human communion, embracing 
the whole wide circle of the children of God, that is 
symbolized in the universal elements comprising the 
Lord’s Supper. It means a divine compassion for 
the weakness and error of those who suffer from 
these limitations, and a transformation of the dust 
and din of present social agitation into some worthier 
and holier relationship between man and man. 

A principal remedy for present needs and inequali- 
ties will be found in still more boldly entrusting the 
masses themselves with the power and responsibility 
for dealing directly with these questions. The multi- 
tudes are poor and blind, and do not clearly see the 
limitations of life and of character which often forbid 
the best-intentioned efforts at legislation to be effec- 
tive. _ Wider experience of actual affairs will teach 
them many things. Individualism is not a spent 
force; it is a force as yet undeveloped. Such 
growth of individuality is the necessary preparation 
for social codperation. In proportion as this becomes 
high and general, it will become possible to attain to 
unity. It is toward this that all the distracting diver- 
sity of efforts in social organizations, in church activi- 
ties, in the outreaching of classes toward each other, 
are tending, and this they are helping to attain. The 
spirit of Christianity, the divine sympathy, is brood- 
ing over the weltering chaos of a social condition still 
too largely without form and void. God is moving 
upon the face of the waters. 

“Believe it, ‘tis the mass of men he loves ; 


And, where there is most sorrow and most want, 
Where the high heart of man is trodden down 


248 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


The most, ’tis not because he hides his face 
From them in wrath, as purblind teachers prate ; 


“Not so; there most is he, for.there is he 
Most needed.” 


The chiefest hunger of a community is, after all, the 
lack of means and ability to produce. Without execu- 
tive ability, without trained and developed resources 
in themselves, without the instruments of creative 
work in their hands, the great mass of the population 
are limited to scant food for the higher faculties, and 
hence continue deficient in manhood, even though 
not suffering bodily hunger, and not exposed to the 
inclemencies of the seasons. There is no untapped 
reservoir of wealth to which the needy may resort for 
the supply of their wants ; there is no vast reserve of 
leadership or directive power, apart from the rank and 
file of men and women, to which they may look for 
help. No new régime, no novel method, no redistri- 
bution of either resources or personal force, can create 
those qualities of character and efficiency for lack of 
which the individual and the community suffer to- 
gether. These must come by growth and painstak- 
ing. cultivation, and other and lesser goods will be 
added to them. Inequality of capacity and of oppor- 
tunity accounts largely for present inequalities of 
condition. The long struggle for an equalization 
of opportunities and rewards has achieved its pres- 
ent results through a realization, in the process of 
history, of the higher qualities of humanity in codper- 
ation with God. Whatever ameliorating tendencies 
are seen at work may justly be reckoned part of the 
equipment of humanity as a whole, operative alike in 


XI TO EVERY MAN HIS WORK 249 


all grades proportionately to their moral attainment, 
for the overcoming of evil, the establishing of good, 
and the genuine nurture of men in the process of 
giving them to eat. 


XLVII. To Every Man his Work 


Numerous social animals —ants, bees, beavers -— 
labor; man alone works. With admirable discrim- 
ination, Professor Marshall defines labor as ‘any exer- 
tion of mind or body undergone partly or wholly with 
the view of some good other than pleasure derived 
directly from the work.” This element of an end out- 
side of itself distinguishes labor from work. Animals 
go forward in their routine activity without either 
freedom or progress; man works with a purpose. 
The animal acts from inherited impulse ; man’s work 
is spontaneous and prophetic. Work is free action 
directed to an intelligent end. The ethical demand 
that each member of society should have his clearly 
defined and secure sphere of work assigned him, has 
not received sufficient attention from those who have 
attempted to deal with the problems of social life. 
There are few so little developed as not to be at least 
vaguely conscious that it is by their activities in pro- 
ductive industry that they enter into fellowship with 
their generation, and thus acquire a definite place in _ 
the ordered whole. When once this bond of common 
work is broken, the individual feels himself to be no 
longer identified with society. Homage to law, in- 
dustry, and honesty — virtues which spring up in 
social relations — fall away, and the individual sinks 
below the level of manhood and becomes a parasite. 

Anything that interferes with the free initiative of 


250 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


the individual deprives him of the chief source of en- 
joyment. Human labor is an integral part of the 
process by which crude materials are converted into 
the means of human life and happiness. Even the 
best of nature’s products are improved by man’s con- 
structive touch. The potato is a crude root, the 
peach a poisonous fruit, the flower little more than 
an unsightly weed, till his care transforms them. A 
more striking evidence of the divine element in human 
activity is the fact that the happiness of the worker 
is graduated by the graduations of his work. In pro- 
portion as his work is high does he rise in improve- 
ment and blessedness. Physical exertion gives health, 
subdues the lower passions, multiplies material com- 
forts. Intellectual effort opens new worlds of thought 
and of ideal life to the student. He that achieves a 
great material work finds probably greater consolation 
in the achievement than in any pecuniary advantage ; 
he that discovers a new truth knows an incomparably 
higher joy; but when a man rises higher and enters 
with strenuous working powers into the moral sphere, 
how much more sublime, even divine, becomes his 
consciousness! This capacity for the highest work 
brings man into near affinity with God and makes 
him partaker of his bliss who worketh even until now. 

Man’s character is moulded by his every-day work 
more than by any other influence except his spiritual 
ideals. The chief formative agencies of the world’s 
history have been the religious and the economic. 
For this reason the question of employment for all 
members of society is distinctly ethical. This is the 
channel through which alone they shall be able to 
work out their true selves as human beings. In the 


XI TO EVERY MAN HIS WORK 251 


edict of January, 1776, issued in the name of Louis 
XVI., Turgot, his great prime minister, said: ‘God, 
in giving to man wants, rendered it necessary that 
he should have property. The right to labor is not 
only the property of all men, but it is the first, the 
most sacred, and the most imprescribable of all 
property.” When society as a whole becomes con- 
scious of its collective obligation to each of its mem- 
bers, it will recognize that facilities for earning an 
honest livelihood are a universal birthright. In this 
sense Lowell is right in saying that no man is born 
into this world whose work is not born with him, but 
if, when he says further, “there is always work and 
tools to work withal for those who will,” he means 
to say that under existing conditions there is, or has 
ever been, opportunity for remunerative labor for each 
one who sought it, his saying is not true. 

The causes for the non-employment of those will- 
ing to labor, a term by no means commensurate 
with the number of those who profess to be desirous 
of employment, are numerous and complex. The 
deepest abyss in the matter of the unemployed is 
the principle that lies at the bottom of our present 
industrial system: “I have all the help that I can 
profitably use.” Labor’s surplus value, profit, is the 
motive power in our present economics. When the 
profit-bearing avenues are glutted, the hungry are 
not fed. But if there is sound political economy in 
the principle that whosoever will not work neither 
shall he eat, the demand is equally sound that who- 
soever is willing to work should be able to eat thereby. 
The number of the unemployed marks the imminency 
and magnitude of this phase of the problem. This is 


252 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


a fruitful source of other evils. Investigation cover- 
ing fifteen thousand cases in England, Germany, and 
the United States shows that while the chief single 
cause of poverty is sickness or death in the families 
of the poor, lack of work stands second. If, however, 
the averages as to the lack of work, insufficient work, 
and poorly paid work, be added together, lack of work 
forms the supreme cause of poverty. 

Modern times are characterized by a lack of harmony 
between realities of life and the ideals of living. The 
tendency in both government and religion is-toward 
individual freedom. But there is no industrial free- 
dom to the man who has no liberty but that of seeking 
work with no assurance of finding it; no property, 
except to seek employment. A question of ethics 
which must soon be seriously asked, is whether the 
industrial power obtained by utilizing the forces of 
nature through invention and machinery is a right or 
a responsibility ; are those who control this hiring of 
labor proprietors or are they trustees? 


“You take my life 
When you do take the means whereby I live.” 


From whatever side considered, the problem of the 
unemployed is grave. We are told that of the pop- 
ulation of East London, seventy-seven per cent is of 
low skill, or wholly unskilled labor. We are further 
told that on an average fifteen per cent of the un- 
skilled laborers are constantly unemployed, and that 
“it seems probable that in the richest city in the 
world one in every four adults dies dependent on 
public charity.” Nor is it easy to see how the wages 
of low and unskilled workers can be materially ad- 


XIII TO EVERY MAN HIS WORK 253 


vanced, so long as this standing pool of excessive 
labor remains from which to drain into surrounding 
industrial opportunities. 

The mass of the unemployed is much greater than 
we are accustomed perhaps to think. It is estimated 
that in England, with its population of 36,000,000, 
there are generally about 700,000 out of work. 
Charles Booth declares that the 24,000 adult men 
included in those whom he classes as “the very poor, 
with casual earnings,” do not, on the average, get 
as much as three days’ work a week. Nor is it to 
be charged that these people are loafers by prefer- 
ence. John Burns pertinently asks, “Is it the loafer 
by trade, do you think, who is willing to shiver for 
hours under the dock gates, in the black gelidity of 
a December morning, for the chance of a shilling’s 
worth of work, and work that needs as much muscle 
as will?” He continues, “I have seen dock hands 
fighting for the gates, like people tussling in the 
passages of a burning theatre, with a fierce physical 
energy (moral inspiration apart) which the chronic 
loafer, even if he would, is powerless to exert.” The 
latest report by Carroll D. Wright, United States 
Commissioner of Labor, on statistics of occupations, 
shows that of the 22,735,661 persons, ten years of 
age and over, engaged in gainful occupations in 1890 
a total of 3,523,730 were unemployed during some 
part of the year, an equivalent, approximately, to 
1,139,672 persons unemployed for the entire twelve 
months, or five and one-tenth per cent of the workers. 
The luxury of maintaining this pathetic host of the 
industrially disarmed is as expensive as that of sup- 
porting the standing armies of the world in times of 


254 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


seace. Negatively, every idle man is a sheer loss 
to the community, withholding just so much creative 
energy from the general stock. Positively, every 
such non-producer adds an extra unit to the divisor 
of the common dividend, and thus diminishes the 
bread of all. 

Naturally, the propositions for relieving this unfor- 
tunate state of things are numerous, and of every 
degree of intelligence and practicability. There is 
work enough to give employment, and money enough 
lying idle to give living wages to all who desire to 
earn, and there is something so abhorrent to human 
reason in the waste of the labor of more than a million 
workers in a continent whose resources wait only the 
developing touch of human labor to multiply the com- 
forts of all its people to almost any degree, that one 
involuntarily feels a certain sympathy with any method, 
however irregular, which promises to benefit either 
the unemployed or the commonwealth. A large 
proportion of remedial plans are impracticable, how- 
ever, because unjust. If every man has the right 
to opportunities of labor, implicit in his right to exist- 
ence, attempts to monopolize those opportunities are 
ethically as indefensible as attempts to monopolize 
materials of life. Any set of men have the right to 
combine and act in concert, for this is of the essence 
of manhood and of human freedom, —to be denied 
this is less than animal, but to compel others to 
abstain from the work which they are willing to do 
is tyranny. The compulsory strike is, therefore, but 
a passing phase. 

Trades unionism alone cannot solve this problem. 
The growth of unions, however, is the sign of a grow- 


XIII TO EVERY MAN HIS WORK 255 


ing tendency to organize. The refusal of so many 
to join these various labor organizations is evidence 
of the independence of the individual with which any 
scheme must reckon. It is possible, however, that 
the union principle may ultimately furnish the needed 
check on the surplus loafing population which curses 
the great cities. It can neither be permanent nor 
ultimately successful, however, so long as erounded 
in a selfishness contrary to the true interests of man- 
kind. Recognizing that only by including as many 
as possible and preventing all others from obtaining 
the means of subsistence can they succeed, the labor 
unions grow hard and unjust in their ideas and deal- 
ings. Says the editor of the London Labor Elector, 
“When dock work becomes more regular, a large 
number of dockers will no doubt be thrust down 
among the loafers, criminals, and semi-criminals, and 


will starve or go to the workhouse.” He further 
proposes that “the casual and his kind be shut up 
in a home colony until they die out.” The state- 


ment is significant as illustrating the readiness of 
the progressive unionist to deal hard measures out- 
side his circle. 

This perplexing problem of lack of gainful occupa- 
tion arises in large part from the massing in the cities 
of those seeking employment. Concentration of pop- 
ulation occasions concentration of misery. There are 
not too many people, but too many in one place and 
too few in others. Better distribution of workers will 
do much to restore the balance. While the army of 
unemployed in the Coxey movement were making 
their way to Washington, the farmers of the states 
through which they passed were lamenting the im- 


256 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


possibility of securing help for their spring work. 
Honest and thrifty persons starve in the cities, while 
the rural districts are hampered and their production 
limited for lack of labor. For sufferings consequent 
upon this unwillingness to accept work where work 
is to be had, many have but themselves to blame. 

By more general distribution of intelligence, much 
might be done to assist those willing to work any- 
where to learn where help was wanted. Many cities 
now have free employment bureaus; but they do not 
as yet find work for all who apply. <A wider territory 
covered, and a more aggressive effort through agents 
sent out by the bureaus, will increase the effectiveness 
of this method, and enlarge the proportion of those 
for whom work is found. A more frequent census 
might keep both employer and employé in the fac- 
tory acquainted with the conditions of trade, the sup- 
ply of raw materials, and the demand for different 
lines of finished products. Information as to oppor- 
tunities for work, as well as the location for available 
labor, might be provided at public cost through the 
agencies of the post-office and like governmental 
institutions, as is now the case with weather 
reports. 

In such ways as these the hardships of the unem- 
ployed may be mitigated, while more radical remedies 
are being prepared for this serious social condition. 
Impelled by a growing consciousness that every man 
is a brother in the family of God, society erelong 
will think it profitable to enable him to contribute 
what he can to the common good, receiving as recom- 
pense that whereby he may live as becomes a man. 
However sentimental or impracticable it may now 


XI THE LABORER WORTHY OF HIS HIRE 257 


appear, before many more generations, their lives 
made bitter by their inability to earn their bread zx 
the sweat of their faces, have dropped into hopeless 
graves, a society that worships the carpenter's Son 
will rise to that plane, not of generosity but of justice, 
where it will provide that no one able and willing to 
work shall be forced to give him who asks, Why 
stand ye here all the day idle? the pitiful answer, 
Because no man hath hired us! 


XLVIII. The Laborer Worthy of his Hire 


An essential part of providing opportunity to work 
is to secure to the worker the just reward of his 
activity. The ethical requirement rests, in each case, 
upon the same basis, —the right of each man to real- 
ize the end of his being, and the duty of society to 
render this possible. By this standard, and not by 
that of demand and supply, the doctrine of Laissez 
Faire, or Ricardo’s iron law, must the entire ques- 
tion of wages be tried. The movement in modern 
times from egoism to altruism— or commonness, 
rather —that is, from selfishness to brotherliness, has 
been probably the most significant transition in all this 
transitional period. The struggle for wages is much 
more than merely the scramble for a larger slice of 
the common loaf. On the part of the workingmen 
themselves, among the more intelligent at least, it is 
a struggle not so much for the additional money as 
for the opportunities for higher things which shorter 
hours and less pinching poverty will bring. On the 
part of more favorably situated members of society 
who espouse the wage-worker’s cause, it is the double 

s 


258 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


effort to place greater privileges within his reach and 
at the same time so to develop him that he shall be 
able to profit by them. 

This is a matter in which the whole of society is 
profoundly interested, because so many of its mem- 
bers are workingmen, men who work for wages, 
dependent upon some one else not only for the oppor- 
tunity to work at all, but also for the compensation 
and for the conditions under which the work is per- 
formed. It is possible for society as an organized 
whole to do much for its separate members in this 
regard. The state, as the greatest employer of labor, 
the chief property-holder, and the administrator of 
the greatest undertakings, exercises a strong direct in- 
fluence on the distribution of incomes and of wealth. 
In its capacity as legislator and administrator, it 
wields also an enormous indirect influence on law and 
custom and, through these, on all social institutions. 
A wise statesmanship may accomplish many things 
through just transformation of economic institutions, 
and thus gradually effect the equitable distribution of 
incomes and property. To follow the establishment of 
government upon a democratic basis by the establish- 
ment of industry upon a social basis is the next great 
step in civilization. 

Too much reliance, however, must not be placed 
upon the state as the means of equalizing conditions 
and advancing the interests of its individual citizens. 
It is important to distinguish between those things 
which can be helped by man’s agency and those 
which cannot. What is unjust in human adminis- 
tration may be changed ; to what limitations are due 
to superhuman causes, reason demands that we sub- 


XII THE LABORER WORTHY OF HIS HIRE 259 


mit with resignation. Hence the labor movement is 
not more economic than ethical, an endeavor to enable 
all men by development of full all-round personality 
to realize the Christian ideal of life, that sanz cannot 
live by bread alone. This ideal has never been 
greatly advanced by legislation. It has had to make 
its way against the wzs zzertee of human nature, 
against greed, avarice, passions and interests the 
most diverse, yet, as a rule, it has prospered best 
when most free from the fostering touch of the politi- 
cal power. 

There is, however, in the name of self-preservation, 
a demand upon society for justice to the wage-earner. 
We regard it an advantage that spheres of activity 
multiply by which self-dependent women secure the 
possibility of self-support. We do not so clearly real- 
ize that these are forced attempts to counterbalance 
grave evils arising from the very economic relations 
which we have created. The opening of new avenues 
of employment to women is of great advantage to them 
in many instances, and a part of the general move- 
ment toward universal emancipation and equality. 
A most happy result of improvements in machinery, 
of growing ease among the people, of broadening 
educational opportunities and freer social intercourse, 
is that woman’s personality is added to the world’s 
assets of available uplifting resources. The woman 
of the future will be able to counteract the often one- 
sided practical propensities of man, and impel civiliza- 
tion forward more smoothly and rapidly by balancing 
the passive and the active forces working in humanity. 
A wonderful gain to mankind will it be when women 
as a whole shall approximate those lofty specimens of 


260 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


their sex who have deserved that magnificent com- 
pliment addressed by Antony to Cleopatra, 


“Thou great day o’ th’ world”; 


or that still nobler acknowledgment in which Pro- 
fessor Tyndall says of one, “She has raised my 
ideal of the possibilities of human nature.” In 
order to attain to this development, woman must 
have liberty and the widest possible range of activity 
and occupation. Yet this enlarged opportunity, like 
every other, is purchased at a serious cost. 

This opportunity cannot be utilized without detri- 
mental influences, for a time at least, upon the home; 
and when from any cause the family is broken or 
injured, the corner-stone of the social fabric crumbles. 
Whatever threatens the home is dangerous to the 
state. The opening of industries to woman destroys 
many homes by taking the mother to the factory, 
and prevents the founding of new homes by making 
an increasing proportion of women either indifferent 
to home-making, or unfitted for it. Woman’s entrance 
into so many branches of industry until recently occu- 
pied by men, must inevitably seriously disturb the 
industrial equilibrium. Weaving, dyeing, baking, 
spinning, manufacturing, were once woman’s work, 
and have been taken out of the home into the factory 
and workshop, cheapened by machinery and appro- 
priated largely by men. Women who must work for 
self-support must follow their work into the world. 
But the danger is that they will so occupy man’s 
place, at cheaper rates, that men will be in a measure 
driven from the field and rendered unable to support a 
family, with consequent disaster to society. Already 


XI THE LABORER WORTHY OF HIS HIRE 261 


less than half the heads of workingmen’s families 
are able by their individual earnings to supply their 
family’s needs; the larger number are assisted by 
their wives and. children. 

Much modern machinery can be managed by women 
and children as remuneratively as by men. Under 
stress of competition the temptation is strong to hire 
the cheapest effective labor. As a consequence, 
children as well as women are forced into the in- 
dustrial arena. The wages of adult male labor are 
reduced by competition with child labor. “The 
substitution of the ‘ring’ for the ‘mule’ in Lan- 
cashire mills is responsible,’ says Hobson, “for the 
sight, which may now be seen, of strong men loung- 
ing in the streets, supported by the earnings of their 
own children, who have undersold them in the labor 
market.” The same portentous spectacle may be 
witnessed in many factory towns of New England. 
Such a course is fraught with unspeakable evils. 
An ignorant operative class is inevitably produced 
by neglect of early education ; an ignorant, is a help- 
less and a suffering class; an ignorant and suffering 
class tends naturally to become a discontented, a 
dangerous, and a criminal class. Moreover, out of 
the children’s problem grows one most grievous 
feature of the woman’s problem. The health of 
women is of even more vital consequence to society 
than that of men. A young girl spending her child- 
hood years at the forge or within the walls of the 
factory, taxing her strength to the utmost in condi- 
tions unfavorable to healthful growth, can neither 
become a housewife, capable of making a home, nor 
the mother of healthy children. 


262 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


For these reasons the question of wages demands 
profounder attention than it has yet received. In 
self-defence, as well as in justice, society must see 
to it that an industrious father’s wages shall suffice 
to keep his wife in the home and his children in 
school. The competition of women and children 
with men is unprofitable to society as well as dis- 
astrous to the workingman. When we see the 
hideous results of unchecked competition between 
man and woman, our instant impulse is to prohibit 
it by legislation. It is impossible, however, to over- 
look the conditions which rightly or wrongly prevail 
in modern life. Speaking of girls employed in nail- 
making at Cradley Heath, Lady Dilke said: “The 
choice for these girls, as for so many others, does 
not lie between home and the market-place; it lies 
between the market-place and the streets. Since, 
therefore, at the present day so many of our women, 
if they would live honestly, must needs stand with 
their men to be hired, the burden laid on us is that 
of seeing that the conditions of their hiring be to 
their utmost advantage, and to the advantage of 
their comrades in the ranks of industry.” 

Elevation of the status of woman and the regula- 
tion of the conditions of labor are ultimately insepa- 
rable questions. Of the thirty-six millions who dwell 
in England, only one million five hundred thousand 
get above fifteen dollars a week. ‘The average in- 
come per head of the working classes,’’ says an Eng- 
lish writer, ““is about seventy-five dollars a year, or 
less than twenty-five cents a day.”” He justly sums 
up the results of a careful presentation of the pres- 
ent status in the antithesis: “If the present condi- 


XIU THE LABORER WORTHY OF HIS HIRE 263 


tions of life are right, the poor are wrong ; but if the 
present conditions of life are not right, the poor are 
wronged.” The small pittance which so many are 
able to secure means little to us until interpreted into 
its consequences. The conditions under which they 
are compelled to earn this scanty living are disgrace- 
ful to the society which tolerates them. They suffer 
needless hardships in the process of their earning: 
the hardships of the sweat-shop, of unwholesome and 
of uncomfortable factories and shops. The priva- 
tions and discomforts to which the needy are willing 
to submit for the sake of work—for life is sweet — 
is by no means the standard for those who inflict such 
things. The homes of these workers are as far short 
of human and ethical requirements as the workshops. 
We rejoice at the growth of great cities into which 
business concentrates the population, and overlook 
the sordid conditions to which this concentration 
dooms a large portion of their inhabitants, — conditions 
so enormously increasing the death rate that to permit 
them is simply municipal murder. 

It is not a justification of this state of things to cry 
with Pharaoh, “Ye are idle, ye are idle,” —and only 
the idle are poor. ‘‘Come with me,” says Robert 
Blatchford, in his ‘ Merrie England,” “ and I will show 
you where men and women work from morning to 
night, from week to week, from year to year, at the 
full stretch of their powers, in dim and fcetid dens, and 
yet are poor— Ay, destitute, have for their wages 
a crust of bread and rags. I will show you where 
men work in dirt and heat, using the strength of 
brutes, for a dozen hours a day and sleep at night in 
sties, until brain and muscle are exhausted and fresh 


264 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


slaves are yoked to the golden car of commerce, and 
the broken drudges filter through the union or the 
prison to a felon’s or a pauper’s grave! ... And I 
will show the graves, and find witnesses to the his- 
tories of brave and noble and industrious poor men 
whose lives were lives of toil and poverty, and whose 
deaths were tragedies.” 

Great dangers to society are involved in the hard 
conditions and meagre incomes of the working 
classes. It is hard to grasp the meaning of no 
work in families where a day’s wage barely pays for 
a day’s hard fare, leaving no penny over. There is 
unspeakable danger, moral as well as physical, in- 
volved in the fact that among the women earning 
their own living, and often the living of men and 
children, too, the average wage, and where some get — 
more many must get less, is only sixty cents a day. 
Often children’s wages average less than two dollars 
per week. Boys, even sixteen and seventeen years of 
age, with a mother or other children to support, re- 
ceive from a dollar and a half to two dollars for their 
weekly stipend. It seems that public ignorance alone 
can account for the continued existence of these 
things. But ignorance, that is wilful, is as criminal 
as hard-heartedness, and upon those who might 
remedy, but will not know, the state in which the 
very poor subsist, rests the responsibility for wretch- 
edness which they might obviate. A Christian 
society must consider its members above its pos- 
sessions. It has never yet done so. Contracts still 
govern wages ; property is above personality. Aquinas 
goes to the heart of this matter in pregnant words, 
which, though six centuries old, are still true, for 


XIII THE LABORER WORTHY OF HIS HIRE 265 


truth is eternal: ‘The possession of riches is not 
unlawful, if the order of reason be observed; that is 
to say, that a man possesses justly what he owns, and 
that he use it in a proper manner for himself and 
others. ... It is a duty of strict justice for the 
employer to give to his work-people a justum 
pretium.” 

This justum pretium is a flexible measure which 
always and in all circumstances is the equivalent of 
the means of living a decent life, morally and mate- 
rially, including not merely food and clothing, house 
and home, but leisure and spiritual cultivation. To 
much property the saying of Proudhon is strictly ap- 
plicable: “La propriété, c’est le vol.’ Ignorance is 
always cruel. The poor and uninstructed, not know- 
ing how much they hurt, do and devise many evil 
things toward each other. But those who are better 
instructed owe it to themselves and their poorer 
brethren to devise that,which shall do justice to 
all. The labor problem is the problem of adjust- 
ment and balance of rights, not a conflict of rights. 
Each man is morally bound to deal honestly with his 
own class, with the opposite class, and with society 
as a whole, whether hiring or hired. While all men 
who are willing to earn it have a right to daily bread, 
it is necessary at the same time that they exercise 
that right justly and with due regard to rights of 
others. There are principles of solidarity and of 
relationship in human society, to be differently ap- 
plied under differing conditions, but which it is essen- 
tial to recognize in order to the establishment and 
continuance of public order. “If you would found 
durable institutions,” Lacordaire urged, upon a mem- 


266 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


orable occasion, “write above the word liberty, obe- 
dience ; above equality, hierarchy; above fraternity, 
veneration ; above the august symbol of rights, the 
divine symbol of duty.” 

Labor and capital are primarily and truly the equiva- 
lent of each other. The employer and the workmen 
are simply parties who exchange commodities that 
are equally needed, and the sum and substance of 
the labor problem is the discovery of the just terms 
on which this exchange shall be made. The work- 
man too often fails to see that the interests of his 
employer and himself are common, and that when 
the employer’s interests are sacrificed, the employé is 
robbed. The profits of this partnership, that is, the 
net profits of the whole industry, is all there is to 
divide between the partners. All classes alike draw 
their remuneration from the accruing increments of 
enjoyable goods. These constitute the total income 
of the community. Wages, interest, rent, business 
profits, all are derived from that capital, or inchoate 
wealth, tools, machinery, factories, warehouses, raw 
materials, partially finished goods, which produce, 
but have not yet become, commodities capable of 
satisfying human wants. 

Vast abuses are to be removed and better methods 
substituted before the moral sense of the community 
will be satisfied with the proportionate distribution of 
this fund through wages. Industrial questions ever 
hasten to become moral questions. This ethical ele- 
ment in society, often latent, but never entirely ab- 
sent, has forced the rewards of those that work for 
wages steadily upward. It seems incredible that in 
the mother-land of the English race, less than five 


XIII THE LABORER WORTHY OF HIS HIRE 267 


and a half centuries ago, there was possible such a 
law as the “Statute of Laborers,’ which decreed, 
that “no carter, ploughman, day or other servants, 
shall take at the time of sarcling or haymaking, but 
a penny a day, and mowers of meadows for the acre 
five pence, or by the day five pence, and reapers of 
corn in the first week of August two pence, and the 
second three pence, and so till the end of August ; 
and less in the country, where less wont to be given, 
without meat or drink or other courtesy.’ Even so 
recently as 1849, a standard American work published 
the accepted definition of wages in these words: 
“Wages are the price paid for labor... . Its natu- 
ral price is that which suffices to maintain the laborer 
and his family, and to perpetuate the race of labor- 
ers.” Contrast this with the law enacted forty years 
later in New York state, by which two dollars a day 
was made the minimum to be paid for a day’s work 
of eight hours in the public employ. Wages and 
manhood are correlative. Wages increase as man- 
hood increases; good wages tend to increase man- 
hood. A badly paid, badly nourished, and overworked 
body of laborers is an obstacle to cheap production 
instead of its cause. 

History is a moral process only because it is the 
process of raising the humblest man unto individu- 
ality. But this result cannot continue as an object 
of hope except where there is an abiding trust that 
the possible underlies the actual and that the future 
shall surpass the present. From an enormous mass 
of evidence, Schultze-Gaevernitz deduced the conclu- 
sion that modern industrial progress has resulted in 
shorter hours of labor, higher weekly wages, lower 


268 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


piece wages, cheaper product, increased product for 
workers, increased speed in machinery, increased 
number and size of machines to the worker. All 
of these are clear gain to the workman except the 
third, which results from and is counterbalanced by 
the sixth and seventh. 

The common people are advancing safely and surely, 
if slowly, to take possession of the earth and its ful- 
ness far more than heretofore. We may hope that 
this will be the future, and speedy, attainment of the 
working world; for, in spite of wars and calamities 
and occasional reactions and untold miseries which 
yet linger, the race moves on steadily to what Mazzini 
calls the music of the collective progress of humanity. 
That music has sustained the faith and kindled the 
courage of brave and generous souls of every race 
in every age, and whosoever listens with sympathetic 
ear can hear it echoing from cycle to cycle through 
all the past. Wealth and prosperity become the 
permanent possession of a nation, and have real value 
only when they are invested in the body of its citizens. 
These are the final depositaries of all material, intel- 
lectual, and moral and religious wealth that is endur- 
ing. Whatsoever becomes incorporated with their 
life becomes thereby immortal. 

Increase of conscious wants «denotes a growing 
man. He ought to grow in power of assimilation as 
powers of production increase. Desire for larger 
and higher existence should keep pace with the means 
of satisfying that desire. The supply of material, 
intellectual, and aesthetic goods which society creates 
is a supply provided by, and available to, the most 
highly developed men. To develop persons is there- 


XIII HE THAT WILL NOT WORK 269 


fore the chief function of society, even as a means 
to its material welfare ; and to enhance the value of 
personality enhances the value of every piece of real 
estate and every share in commercial enterprises. 
The productive power of the workman is proportion- 
ate to the amount expended in developing his capacity. 
Every able-bodied man represents a certain capital 
invested by the community, and his loss, through lack 
of development, idleness, accident, sickness, or un- 
timely death, is just so much loss to society at large. 
This is the economic justification of the altruistic 
protest against needless waste of human life. The 
importance, even to national permanence, of culti- 
vating manhood as well as fostering material pros- 
perity is brilliantly set forth by the illustrious member 
of the Institute, Pasteur, in a pamphlet suggestively 
entitled, ““Why France did not find Able Men in 
the Hour of Danger.” “If, in the hour of supreme 
danger,” he says, “France did not find able men to 
set in operation her resources and the courage of her 
sons, we must attribute it, I am convinced of it, to 
the fact that France, for the past half-century, has 
not interested herself in great mental activities, es- 
pecially in the exact sciences.” 


XLIX. He that will not Work, neither shall 
he Eat 
The true end of man is also the determining ele- 
ment in that great section of the social problem, the 
care of the defective, delinquent, and dependent 
classes. It is no part of the divine desire that the 
poor shall be with us any longer than until they be- 
come capable, singly and socially, of becoming rich, 


270 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


or rather of having such things as are needful for the 
body and the mind. Once get rid of the pious cant 
that God has decreed poverty to some, and all will 
the more energetically strive for the day when the 
demand of humanity, which is therefore the demand 
of God for humanity, shall be realized. 

Like all other social problems, this of wisely minis- 
tering daily bread to the needy is a question of per- 
sonal relations. Though poor, the pauper is yet a 
man ; though a criminal, the felon is stilla man. As 
aman the one is to be fed and the other reformed. 
The social problem, therefore, presents itself in all its 
complexity whenever we are confronted by a hungry 
man asking foracrust oremployment. ‘ What are you 
to do with that man?” asks William Booth. ‘There 
he stands, your brother, with six pennyworth of rags 
to cover his nakedness from his fellow-man, and not 
six pennyworth of victuals within his reach. To deal 
with this man is the Problem of the Unemployed.” 
Charity is more than almsgiving. It is love for the 
unfortunate ; it is personal care for the helpless and 
suffering ; it is patient training of those that need 
correction. Personality, above all else, is what the 
poor need. Help by money often pauperizes; help 
through personality always ennobles. Such personal 
interests and knowledge of one another as is needful 
in order to this higher helpfulness will foster the 
family life among the poor instead of dismembering 
it, as is now done by so much of our charitable activ- 
ity through clubs and societies and similar mechanical 
devices. 

There is hopeful growth in this direction. At first 
the practice was, “ Let men help themselves” ; after- 


XU ; HE THAT WILL NOT WORK pag 


wards the theory was, ‘Let men help each other” ; 
' now the effort is to combine the two, and help men 
to help themselves. Modern charitable ideas and 
organizations rest upon these four corner-stones, 
relief, protection, elevation, prevention. Charitable 
methods are being subjected to rigid inspection, 
and charitable endeavor directed more and more to 
preventive and reformatory ends; for it is beginning 
to be recognized that indiscriminate charity is itself 
responsible for a large proportion of our civic pauper- 
ism, and that ignorant and inadequate dealing with 
the tramp problem has only fostered its growth. The 
question is seen to be not so much benevolent as 
economic. All relief is admittedly only a temporary 
expedient ; removal of the conditions is the essential 
thing. 

As painstaking and continuous investigation works 
out an increasingly correct theory of social evolution, 
charity scrutinizes more earnestly and intelligently 
the remote results of its application. Much social 
injury arises from inconsiderate benevolence. Hasty 
dashes at charitable endeavor are as apt to be fraught 
with evil as with good. Weshall make little progress 
in dealing with this subject until we realize that pau- 
perism is a social disease which requires skilful diag- 
nosis and careful treatment. Pauperism is not simply | 
want of funds; a mental and moral deficiency, in 
most cases, occasions this want. Hence, if poverty 
may not be wholly put away, it may at least be pre- 
vented from becoming epidemic, as are other diseases, 
both physical and social. 

There is need of system in our social administra- 
tion that the honest and deserving poor may not be 


272 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


driven, in so many instances, to suicide and even to 
destroying their loved ones to save them from pro- 
tracted want. A science of compassion is needed. 
It must not be forgotten, in the abstract reasonings 
and general principles of sociology, that, after all, 
the concrete exists also, and the individual alone suf- 
fers hunger or loneliness. Closer contact is needed 
between the helpless and the helpful as brethren. 
It is poor management for society to build almshouses 
and hospitals to rectify its own fundamental mistakes. 
Créches are provided to care for children of working 
mothers, —but social conditions should rather be 
made such that the mother seldom need leave her 
babes and go abroad as a wage-earner. 

The population of the world is divided into two 
very important classes ; the distinction between them, 
however, is not poverty and riches, but character and 
life. The workers are the one class, the idlers the 
other. The workers are those who usefully serve 
their fellow-men, whatever their occupation or con- 
dition. The idlers are those who live on the workers. 
The non-worker, though a millionaire, is a social para- 
site. A frequent characteristic of the poor idler is 
absolute degeneration of character ; for it is a sad fact 
that a worker who falls into need is easily converted 
into an idler, and this grievously complicates attempts 
to help the unfortunate. The Christian precept, // 
any one will not work, neither let him eat, is merely 
an articulation of that universal natural law that a 
creature not energetic enough to maintain itself must 
die. Forgetting this, many things done with benevo- 
lent intent turn out very differently in their remoter 
and collateral issues. An estate set apart for the 


XIII HE.THAT WILL NOT WORK 273 


perpetual aid of the poor in an English shire ruined 
the shire and peopled it with paupers. The founda- 
tions in Oxford and Cambridge to help poor students 
have long been perverted into aid to luxury for the 
rich, and the school at Harrow, founded for the poor 
of the village of Harrow, has become the nursery of 
the gilded youth of England. Negro slavery in the 
West Indies arose out of the kind purpose but mis- 
guided judgment of Bishop Las Casas. 

The widespread challenge of charitable methods in 
vogue is evidence that we are entering upon a new 
era; that preventive work shall characterize the 
future, and the machinery of benevolence be improved 
and made to work for the changing of social and in- 
dustrial conditions, as the means by which ’so much of 
poverty and crime as is remediable shall be done 
away. To the same general end must punishment 
be directed, for the character of the criminal is both 
the cause and the result of his criminality. Punish- 
ment, to be really preventive, must be reformatory ; 
it must clearly be shown to be what Hegel finely - 
calls it, “the other end of crime.” It strives to 
qualify the criminal for the resumption or rights, to 
refit him for taking his place again as a citizen with 
renewed capacity and fresh determination to fulfil his 
social responsibilities. The only legitimate aim for 
the philanthropic impulse of society is such mutual 
cooperation as shall raise all its members to manhood, 
and keep them there. 


CHAPTER XIV 


FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS AS WE HAVE FORGIVEN OUR 
DEBTORS 


L. Our Common Debt of Knowledge 


THE intelligence which man brings to bear upon 
the improvement of his condition, is the measure and 
instrument of his progress. Tied together as men 
are by bands of interest and relationship more intri- 
cate than the knot of Gordias, their duties toward 
each other have the same complexity. 

Among the first obligations which the different 
classes and individuals comprising society owe to 
each other, is a reasonable knowledge by each of the 
conditions which determine the lives of the other. 
It conduces very largely to that feeling of brother- 
hood which is the basis of all genuine interest in 
mankind to realize that those who dwell in the most 
remote jungles, or islands, or arctic circles, no less 
than those who throng the most favored portions of 
Europe or America, are still bone of our bone and 
flesh of our flesh. It stirs our sympathies to realize 
that through all the historic ages, nourished by the 
most diverse forms of civilization, men of like pas- 
sions with ourselves have thrilled at the same pleas- 
ures, quivered under the same pains, and grappled 
with the same problems as ourselves. 

Social questions in particular, because they deal 

274 


CHAP. XIV OUR COMMON DEBT OF KNOWLEDGE 275 


entirely with human relations and are so far-reaching 
in their consequences, require most careful and ade- 
quate knowledge by all concerned. Among signs of — 
promise, none is more hopeful at present than man’s 
widespread study of mankind. In this compara- 
tively new departure there is much that is crude, 
superficial, sentimental; there is much also that is 
intelligent, painstaking, thorough. Attention cannot 
be thus turned to the conditions under which differ- 
ent factors of society exist without some way being 
found to bring them together. 

Are we quite sure, however, that the numerical 
majority has been sufficiently sympathetic with those 
speaking a different dialect or taken sufficient pains 
to understand them? Has not the seeming red- 
handed communism of Proudhon’s “ Property is rob- 
bery”’ been sufficient to prevent our reading his 
justification of that phrase, and thus to keep us in 
ignorance of his moral earnestness and sincerity ? 
Has.not our revolt from the supposed implications in 
the theory of the Descent’of Man blinded us to the 
crystalline candor of Charles Darwin? Have our 
previous conceptions permitted us to accept at their 
true value the dispassionate collection and presenta- 
tion of facts by Herbert Spencer? If we feel that 
we have a right to complain that the conservative 
position is not understood nor fairly treated by those 
who do not accept our conclusions, they certainly 
have equal ground for claiming that the existing 
social order will not take the trouble to consider the 
justice and reasonableness of their objections. How 
many outside the ranks of workingmen regularly 
read a labor journal? How many of those who con- 


276 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


sider themselves bound to be interested in industrial 
questions take the trouble adequately to inform them- 
selves as to what the working classes themselves are 
actually thinking on all these questions, and particu- 
larly what is their opinion of those very persons and 
classes who thus loftily own an obligation to take an 
interest in them? Notwithstanding the narrowness 
and limited information with which too many of the 
labor papers and too much of the labor literature are 
characterized, still it is only from them that a true 
knowledge of their point of view and the ideas which 
rule among workmen may be obtained. 

As between employers and employés, those who 
work for wages have been to the greater extent in- 
vestigators and students of this problem; it must be 
confessed that as a class those who work for the 
margin of profit have failed to inform themselves 
on these subjects. The employer has kept himself 
intelligent as to prices, markets, materials, but has 
too largely neglected to study the relations of his 
workmen to him and of himself tothem. The laborer 
needs also to recognize more fully the debt he owes to 
the unrewarded efforts of thought. The pale student, 
working more hours a day, and for a smaller stipend 
than the wage-earner, discovers nature’s laws, har- 
nesses nature’s forces, plucks the fangs from the 
jaws of the vipers of disease, brings to light the 
needs, and points out the attainable rights of 
the toiler. One brain is lord of many hands. Society, 
therefore, should crown the hero of the study no less 
than of the shop. And this the more, because the 
first thing to strike an intelligent observer at a con- 
ference between the representatives of labor and of 


XIV OUR COMMON DEBT OF KNOWLEDGE 277 


capital, is the absence of clear thinking on both 
sides. Friendly discussion and broad, sympathetic, 
deep-reaching study would contribute that element 
of mutual understanding, through mutual knowledge 
of the common facts and fundamental laws, which is 
the factor just now most needed in labor and social 
problems. The most striking feature of the claims 
made by representatives and champions of labor is 
their indefiniteness. The representatives of capital, 
without better natural ability necessarily, still possess 
a great advantage in the clearness and singleness of 
their aims, and that mental training which comes 
from experiencé with large and complicated affairs. 
The hopeful feature of this serious situation lies in 
the numerous signs of awakening to the fundamental 
importance of a general diffusion of knowledge in 
regard to social and political science. It is beginning 
to be seen that this is desirable and imperative be- 
yond all other things. As yet the boundary lines 
are shifting. The very foundations of social and 
economic science themselves are fluent, and every 
form of speculation, however absurd when submitted 
to practical tests, is able to assume an air of plausi- 
bility and obtain ready acceptance with those whose 
sympathies it meets but whose judgment is unable 
to detect its fallacies. Elaborate presentation of 
“facts” are made which can bear neither the definite 
application of recognized principles, nor the test of 
inquiry into their own existence. Much confusion 
of thought as well as irritation between different 
segments of society, is due to this misinformation. 
The most appalling consequences are deduced from 
premises which better investigation shows to have 


278 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


no existence. A pertinent illustration is the claim, 
“The great English nation is tenant at will to a 
few thousand landowners”; whereas Lord Derby’s 
doomsday book shows their number to be about a 
million. The facts with regard to increase of rent 
are shown, by census reports and parliamentary blue 
books, to be exactly contrary to what is set forth in 
one popular program of taxation. When students of 
the problem consult unimpeachable statistics, whether 
English or American, rather than the declamations 
of ill-informed agitators or equally ill-informed senti- 
mentalists, it is discovered that instead of the poor 
growing poorer while the rich grow richer, the oppo- 
site is the truth and that, upon the whole, large 
incomes are diminishing while small incomes are 
increasing and moderate fortunes multiplying. 
Much of the material for agitation and many of the 
strongest motives for social reforms are drawn from 
the frightful destitution of the poor. Applying the 
touchstone of investigation to these statements, we 
find the details of the picture indeed to be none too 
dark, but we also find that these sombre colors 
occupy only a little corner of the social canvas. 
Though in itself enormous and appalling, the bulk 
of misery, in comparison with the mass of comfort 
and happiness in the community, is small. The 
darker pictures will not apply, in either Europe or 
America, to more than from one-tenth to one-eighth 
of the population. Enormous as these numbers still 
are, equal to a good-sized nation in themselves, yet it 
must not blind our eyes to the truth that for every 
one that is miserable from seven to nine are pros- 
perous and that their prosperity is increasing, while 


XIV OUR COMMON DEBT OF KNOWLEDGE 279 


the numbers and misery of the unfortunate are 
decreasing. This fact is largely overlooked by phi- 
lanthropists and by labor agitators. They frame their 
indictment of society in the murky atmosphere of 
these exceptions instead of under the clear sky and 
invigorating air of the general rule. The only cure 
for this disease of mental ophthalmia is knowledge, 
knowledge of the facts in themselves, knowledge of 
their relative importance, knowledge of their drift, 
and knowledge of the conditions which cause or cure 
them. 

Among other unfortunate misconceptions on many 
important points which prevail among the poorer 
classes is an indiscriminate hostility towards the rich 
as such. When a class is growing, as the working- 
men are, in every element of manhood as well as in 
power to use the desirable things of life, it is natural 
that their expectations should be in advance of their 
ability to compass their full desires. Where there is 
defective knowledge of the true conditions of success, 
it is natural for those dissatisfied with their state to 
charge their misfortune to the oppressive actions of 
others more successful. There is an unfortunate 
tendency in discussing practical questions, and in 
legislating for practical ends, to ignore, even when 
known, the natural forces in obedience to which 
alone can the interests of all be brought into more har- 
monious and equitable relation. These silent forces 
are not material, but intellectual and ethical. Noth- 
ing can be more misleading than the argument of 
Engels, that the final causes of all social changes and 
political revolutions are to be sought, not in man’s 
brains, nor in man’s better insight into eternal truth 


280 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


and justice, but in changes in the modes of produc- 
tion and exchange. They are to be sought, he says, 
“not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each 
particular epoch.” Yet, so long as intelligence is 
superior to blind ignorance, man’s condition will be 
improved by discovery of underlying laws and obedi- 
ence to them. Intelligence will discover the path to 
success, and the moral sense will determine its appli- 
cation with regard to the rights of all. _ 

Serious danger to society lurks also in the narrow- 
ness of view which characterizes even the educated 
leaders of the assault upon the present social order. 
“Misery,” says Huxley, “is a match that never goes 
out ; genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder 
hollow; and if knowledge which should give that 
power guidance is wanting, the chances are not 
small that the rocket will simply run amuck among 
friends and foes.’ The socialistic movement now 
stirring European society to its depths derives its 
force from the determination on the part of men 
naturally able, but of narrow outlook, somehow or 
other to end the misery and degradation which is 
the lot of so many of their fellows. The words of 
Harriet Martineau, written forty years ago, are still 
pertinent: “If it concerns rulers that their meas- 
ures should be wise; if it concerns the wealthy that 
their property should be secure, the middling classes 
that their industry should be rewarded, the poor 
that their hardships should be redressed, it concerns 
all that political economy should be understood.” 

Those of higher privilege and greater opportunity 
have a corresponding duty here. The people perish 
for want of knowledge. They are bewildered by 


XIV OUR COMMON DEBT OF KNOWLEDGE 281 


noisy clamor and contradictory voices, all alike claim- 
ing to have regard to their interests. Yet how few 
of those competent to give this high leadership are 
preparing themselves for such service by impartial, 
searching study into these questions! The desired 
improvement will not come until the effort to achieve 
it is driven by some unselfish motive power, strong 
enough to impel to self-sacrifice and laborious co- 
operation those classes who, having least at stake 
apparently, have yet the strongest incentive in their 
very superiority and power to help. The sacrifices 
demanded are not so much of money as of that ease- 
loving contentment which is satisfied to be ignorant, 
or to be indifferent, or to rest in shallow views of the 
relations of men to each other. 

Unfortunately, many workingmen take little pains 
to inform themselves of what is being done for them 
by those classes and organizations toward whom they 
feel such bitterness. A disastrous deficiency in the 
labor movement is the ignorance of many wage-earn- 
ers of the real spirit, activities, and achievements of 
the Christian Church. While it is true, as admitted 
by a labor leader in England, himself an infidel, that, 
“Jesus Christ holds the key to the industrial situa- 
tion,” it is also true that the church itself is that 
key, and therewith will he unlock it. The last thing 
to be learned is the fundamental character of moral 
principle. It is no longer king’s right, but individ- 
ual’s right, that is divine. But that divine right, 
common to all, is the right to be, or to become, 
individual; that is the one sacred thing in society. 
The securing of property rights or political rights 
comes far short of the true end of organized society. 


282 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


It is a false political theory which regards the end of 
either the state or society to be anything less than 
that men may live nobly. Superficial views of the 
spiritual life lead to this undervaluation of the church 
as a social power; salvation is not some remote and 
mythical state, but the present process of realizing 
our ideal of life. To be saved from sin is to be con- 
formed to the law of life, to adapt our relations to our 
environment. Whosoever regards his own interests 
as the law of his life will suit his conduct to that 
view. When it is learned that the true law of life 
is unselfishness, and when men strive to fit their 
conduct to that law, these problems will be largely 
brought to solution. 


LI. The Spirit of Stewardship 


Out of this conscious identity of the interests and 
responsibilities of every class and individual there 
will inevitably spring a sympathy as broad as human 
kind. Genuine knowledge of not only how the other 
half lives, but what it really is, will make those who 
need the helpful touch of a stronger brother willing 
to receive, and will make those who are able, eager 
to impart to the meagre lives about them something 
of their own richness. 

Sympathy is the true social bond. A serious 
obstacle to the fullest mingling of rich and poor, not 
less but even greater than the haughtiness of the 
rich, is the haughtiness, the suspicion, the self-asser- 
tion of the poor. And yet the sidewalk beggar, into 
whose hands the passer-by tosses a dime, lives in a 
world which his benefactor can by no means enter. 
There is an impalpable separation which keeps classes 


XIV THE SPIRIT OF STEWARDSHIP 283 


apart. The luxurious may be brought so near to the 
toiling as to touch, but if there be the insulation of 
either condescension or distrust, the distance is im- 
measurable. Contact is not communication. We 
are learning slowly, but surely, that the tragedy of 
philanthropic effort lies in the final consciousness 
that even love cannot enable one to understand a life 
separated by every experience and standard. In- 
difference of so many to opportunity, willingness to 
endure removable evils, passivity under the burdens 
of tenement-house conditions, all prove to the thought- 
ful and unsentimental that kinship rests finally on 
common, or at least related, experience. The poor 
are quicker to recognize the difference which love 
may try to ignore than those who try to help them. 
This knowledge makes the chasm. 

There is no more unmistakable sign of social prog- 
ress than the changed attitude of society towards its 
poorer members. Previous to Christianity they were 
ignored; ancient Christianity distributed a dole of 
charity to the needy ; mediaeval benevolence formed 
guilds to succor the unfortunate ; it was left to recent 
years to rise to the nobler conception of an entire 
community growing up to a higher level together 
through mutual co-working. This idea is now strik- 
ing root in many places, and its fruits will be rich and» 
abundant. The progress made by humanity in its 
consciousness of self-unity since the days of Columbus 
obtains a pictorial setting forth in the contrast be- 
tween the original convent of La Rabida and its copy 
in Jackson Park. In the first, Columbus was received 
into a group who considered their own highest inter- 
ests to demand their withdrawal from the world. The 


284 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


turning of the World’s Fair facsimile into a free sani- 
tarium for sick children emphasizes the growing con- 
viction that the highest self-cultivation is found in 
service of the neediest. 

On this vital sympathy throughout the social body 
the hope of the future rests. Botanists have learned 
that wherever a poisonous plant is found its natural 
antidote will not be far to seek. The close observer 
of society is constantly surprised to find how fully in 
every community each want may be matched by its 
appropriate supply. The great problem is to bring 
these two together. Were it possible to set the lack 
of society over against its fulness, the factors, like a 
school-boy’s problem in cancellation, would go near 
to eliminate each other. But the need is often un- 
suspected, and the power to help often unrecognized. 
To mediate between these complementary conditions, 
to bring it about that the deficiency of one shall match 
the proficiency of the other, in a word, to gear the 
helpfulness of the community into its helplessness is 
the highest mission of the spirit of brotherhood. 

Among the energies and social motives of the day, 
there lacks a complete manifestation of the power 
which is yet to be attached to the social machinery 
in order to produce that increase of happiness, that 
wide diffusion of justice, that more equitable division 
of the world’s goods, which all thinking men desire. 
The idea of force as predominant, a reliance upon 
brute strength, which is our still inexhausted legacy 
from our brute ancestry, has not yet permitted us 
to see clearly that the true secret of success in the 
development of the human race is, that strength shall 
be the servant of weakness, that the high shall be the 


XIV THE SPIRIT OF STEWARDSHIP 285 


helpers and protectors of the lowly, and that the 
mainspring of all progress and of all reform lies in 
the saying, Zhou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
It will be found that such use of strength makes 
even greater demands upon it than when used solely 
for personal ends. Browning is a prophet of the 
coming time when he makes the noble advocate of 
Cleves, the man of mighty heart and tender sympathy 
with the poor, not a sentimental weakling, but one 
conspicuous in a multitude to friend and foe alike as 
“him with the forehead,” and “the man with the brow.” 
The need of the time is, and will continue to be, 
for increasing numbers of those who, from the high 
places of culture, refinement, and education, can go 
down into the valleys where dwell, not alone the poor, 
but also those favored in earthly estate, whose aspira- 
tions reach only to luxury, place, fame, or money, 
and bring to them a vision of genuine manhood em- 
bodied in lives fed by internal springs of true con- 
secration and nobility as the chief thing in the world. 
Moses’ wish that God would put his spirit upon all 
the people was a wish for the uplifting of the masses 
in personality, which forecast what society will yet 
desire for its members. Only then will men truly 
begin to show what they can do. 
“For these things tend still upward, progress is 

The law of life, man is not Man as yet. 

* * * * * 

When all mankind alike is perfected, 

Equal in full-blown powers, — then, not till then, 

I say, begins man’s general infancy.” 

Man himself is the goal of the divine endeavor, 

and manhood the highest possible achievement to 


286 THE FAMILY OF .GOD CHAP. 


which we are summoned of God. The sordid aim 
still predominates, and it is strengthened by the 
multiplying of what can minister to the material and 
animal life, till it is feared by observing students 
that we are developing a distinctively economic type, 
at the expense of those higher qualities which are 
essential to a healthful state of society. This is un- 
doubtedly true of that class whose maxim is “ business 
is business,” “every one for himself” —scadzes occupet 
extremum, but nevertheless we have reached a point 
where it is no longer permitted one to isolate himself 
in interests and regard from his fellows, and where 
one class cannot set itself over against another with 
a sense of separation. 

It is no longer sufficient to regard the poor and 
the unfortunate as simply picturesque features in the 
social background, a unique race whose wants and 
struggles give color to dilettante art and literature, 
and furnish the subjects of a superficial philanthropy 
and affectation of interest. On the contrary, the 
sense of obligation, which accompanies clearer vision 
and higher position and greater powers, has begun to 
strike so deeply down into the sub-soil of social life that, 
even where the historical Christ is doubted, the ethical 
Christ — with his cross of self-surrender and his life 
of service —remains the commanding figure and ex- 
ample to the world. Men of highest culture, wealth, 
social position, lay them all at the feet of the Son 
of man in the service of men. Beneath the self- 
seeking of the time is stirring a response as never 
before to the call of social service. There is a moral 
socialism which expects and strives to create a better 
world. 


XIV THE SPIRIT OF STEWARDSHIP 287 


“Nothing great,” says Emerson, “was ever achieved 
without enthusiasm,” and only that consuming passion 
of helpfulness which the Christ exemplified can meet 
the requirements of our day or satisfy the profound- 
est impulses of a large portion of society itself. In- 
creasing sensitiveness to misery and wrong, however 
humble the sufferer, renders possible and accompanies 
social improvement. The hope of humanity, in this 
particular not less than in others, lies in the fact that 
the divine principle of growth has this quality also in 
its keeping and is leading it forward steadily toward 
its fitting supremacy in the moral development of 
mankind. Society is not drawing upon an accumu- 
lated fund, but is opening new fountains of altruistic 
feeling as God leads humanity upward in an intel- 
lectual and moral advance through codperation with 
himself. 

The altruistic factor which evolution has brought 
to view, not as obedience to an “ultra-rational sanc- 
tion,’ but as the central force in social life, requires, 
and we are approaching its recognition, that there 
shall be some true “ keeping ” of our brother in reality 
as well as in ideality. The church, the club, the 
lodge, the union, now to some degree look after their 
own, but there is yet a vast multitude belonging to 
neither, who are scattered abroad as sheep having 
no shepherd. With this great host districted, listed, 
superintended, by sympathetic overseers to whom any 
one may go when in trouble as to one who calleth 
his sheep by name, the resources of all will be 
brought to the help of each, and much of suffering, 
of want, of crime, will be done away. Now that so 
much has been done to relieve, beautify, and ennoble 


288 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


life for many, the further step need not be difficult 
that shall make these things true for all. “It does 
not seem,” says Herbert Spencer, “to be suspected 
that pure altruism is always wrong. ... Each citi- 
zen .. . professes to think that entire self-sacrifice 
must be right, though dimly conscious that it will be 
fatal.” Pure altruism, yes. But that joining of self- 
sacrifice with service of others, which we have already 
seen to be the true basis of social life, is not fatal but 
life-preserving. Self-love is an abiding duty, since to 
make the most of self in a perfected, free personality 
is simply to codperate with the divine intent in calling 
us into being. True self-love is the antithesis of self- 
ishness. Full personality can be attained only in the 
forum of social life. The man who segregates his 
interests and concentrates all his motives and ends 
upon himself, both stunts his own growth and’ thus 
foils the divine purpose, and contemns the Author of 
his being in turning thus wilfully aside from the open 
door here set before him. 

In deepest harmony with these principles of God’s 
relation to man is the saying, Whosoever will save 
his life shall lose it, and Whosoever shall lose his life 
for my sake shall find it. This is to convert the 
weakness of one into the power of the many. Self 
is sown as seed ; it is harvested as social good. Wise 
investment of life is no easier than wise invest- 
ment of money. Even greater fog banks of mis- 
understanding and_ shortsightedness surround it. 
Achievement is life. Life that is not put out at 
interest in activity, like hoarded money or stored 
grain, is profitless. True self-sacrifice, which subor- 
dinates the momentary and partial self to the per- 


XIV THE STEWARDSHIP OF PROPERTY 289 


manent and whole self, never robs self nor comes 
into conflict with the real good of others. Both are 
nourished from the same source; both suffer if either 
is injured. It is required of a man, however, by the 
spirit of God manifesting itself in him, that he hold 
both what he is and what he has in the spirit of 
stewardship. 


Lil. The Stewardship of Property 


The personality of man, the fact that every human 
being is a moral being, makes the institution of pri- 
vate property necessary. Property is nothing else 
than the application of man’s individuality to external 
things, the realization and manifestation of his in- 
dividuality in the material world. Could man cease 
to be able to say mzxe and thine, he would cease to be 
a man. 

In becoming a factor of society a man does not lose 
his identity, as raindrops mingle in a flowing stream. 
He not only remains individual, but intensifies his 
individuality in the process of developing society 
itself. Social institutions are the product of this 
process, and have steadily grown by adaptation to the 
expanding nature of man. A large part of society’s 
attention has been given to defining and securing the 
right of private possession, with the result that two 
things are fundamental in the human conception of 
what constitutes society, — individual liberty and the 
right of private property. Liberty, the privilege to 
use one’s talents and one’s opportunities as one will, 
is the fruit of long years of struggle against mon- 
archy, monopoly, and feudal relations; private prop- 
erty has had to contend with unscrupulous power, 

U 


290 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


unrestrained greed, and the clamor of the un- 
propertied. 

The right of property is a part of individual liberty, 
and its ultimate ground is the primal reason. It is 
necessary to the full explication of human personality. 
The instinct of self-preservation leads men to appro- 
priate things, to surround themselves with these as 
means of offence and defence and as ministers to life 
and welfare, and thus convert them into permanent 
instruments of the human will. Things, being void 
of self, have no rights against a person, a being pos- 
sessing selfhood. There is no question, then, of the 
right of possession, only of right use. Property, as a 
specific and available instrument of human will and 
aims, is realized liberty. The hope of property has 
been not only the chief spur to individual exertion, 
but one of the strongest forces of civilization. In 
regions where this hope has not yet developed, or in 
degraded and decadent aggregations of humanity, as 
in large portions of our great cities, where it has died 
out, there is a low grade of morality and an absence 
of effort or wish to improve. The most effective 
missionary effort among the hopeless and property- 
less denizens of our cities is to reawaken this desire 
in the occupants of unsavory districts, through secur- 
ing their assistance in improving their own material 
surroundings. 

Lying so deeply imbedded in human nature, the 
desire for property requires a more powerful force 
for its regulation than the clumsy operations of re- 
strictive laws. Its fundamental justification is the 
impulse of the human spirit to realize itself in external 
form and place its impress upon the material world. 


XIV THE STEWARDSHIP OF PROPERTY 291 


The dangers arising from its large accumulation in a 
single hand spring, not from the power thus subject 
to a single will, but from the defect of moral sense 
which permits that power, as any other, to be wielded 
in animmoral way. As it has been to the advantage 
of the world that the unrivalled talents of Shakespeare 
or the genius of Raphael could not be distributed and 
thus lost, but, through being held intact and admin- 
istered by one personality, became the unequalled 
blessings and priceless possessions of the world, so 
the power of impressing one’s self upon large por- 
tions of material things and stamping with personal 
qualities great amounts of capital, when administered 
under a high sense of just obligation, is one of the 
rarest sources of benefit to the world at large. 

The justice of distribution does not require equality 
of amount, but equity of use. No man has a right 
to more than he is able to ethicize and transform into 
true property by taking it up into the service of his 
will as a moral being. To him who can use wisely 
and righteously a thousand millions, that is the meas- 
ure of his right and of his just share; to him who can 
use but one hundred dollars profitably and righteously, 
that is his share. Equal division of the property of 
any country among its population, so far from bene- 
fiting the individuals, would effectually destroy two-. 
thirds of its present valuation, and would leave merely 
a nominal sum, consisting principally of a stagnant 
non-productive mass of assets, amounting in America 
to some five thousand dollars in property and one 
hundred and twenty-five dollars in money to each 
family. It would be true, then as now, that ninety- 
nine men in the hundred would lack the power of 


292 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


great personality to transfuse this inert mass with 
life and spirit, and the hundredth man, though pos- 
sessing the power, would lack an equivalent amount 
as leverage with which to operate, and society would 
come to a standstill and civilization decay into bar- 
barism. 

Enormous fortunes have been acquired in some 
cases through exceptional opportunities growing out 
of rapid multiplication of machinery and utilizations 
of natural force, of which the benefits accrue first to 
those best prepared to turn them to advantage. This 
naturally excites animosity and is a source of bitter- 
ness and envy among those to whom these things 
are impossible. Too often there is vulgar display 
and ostentation on the part of those rich by accident 
rather than by personal appropriation, and the power 
which such vast resources bring is too much abused 
by those whose moral quality is insufficient to render 
them worthy to receive riches. In spite of these 
many and frequent exceptions, it must ever be kept 
in mind that in most cases wealth represents the 
sum of service, ofttimes but a small percentage of 
the sum of service, rendered to the public in ways 
which only that owner’s peculiar talents made possi- 
ble and which had not been rendered except for the 
possibility of effecting in their use that personal ex- 
pression which is the moving impulse to every per- 
son’s activity. 

To look upon the accumulation of a large fortune 
as the process of subtracting that sum from the public 
fund is entirely to overlook the processes by which 
wealth is created. To take for private advantage that 
which belongs to others is robbery, however disguised 


XIV THE STEWARDSHIP OF PROPERTY 293 


under business forms. Most fortunes are no more 
than a small fraction of wealth created and distributed 
to the public through exercise of the foresight, admin- 
istrative ability, organizing power, or sheer creative 
energy of their proprietors. For the state, therefore, 
to legislate against large fortunes, or to attempt, in 
the spirit of a socialistic propaganda, to lay violent 
hands upon fortunes legitimately acquired is deliber- 
ate social suicide. What is really needed is not less 
material gain, but larger moral attainment. Instead 
of Proudhon’s “Property is robbery” and Herron’s 
“ Property is religion,” we need to learn that property 
is responsibility, trust, stewardship. This is the golden 
mean between communism and monopoly. 

Property is subject to the same laws as all else that 
a man possesses. There is but one perpendicular 
in ethics, as in physics. Justice in the relation of 
property is as imperative as in the relations of per- 
sonality. Every right is conditioned upon every 
other right. Nothing is falser than the saying that 
aman has a right to do what he will with his own. 
He has only a right to do what he ought with his 
own. No right is subject to the mere arbitrary 
impulses of self-will. A right is a moral entity con- 
ditioned by duties, and rights and duties are opposite 
sides of the same relation. In property concerns 
this fundamental truth is frequently obscured by the 
sophisms of selfishness and the platitudes of political 
economists; yet moral law rules supreme over prop- 
erty, over commerce, over industry, over legislation, 
as well as over the things of the spirit. With refer- 
ence to many methods of creating wealth and to the 
proportions that prevail in its distribution, we may 


294 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


say, as the wise Duke of Weimar said, when the first 
Napoleon’s glory was at its height, “It is unjust; it 
cannot last.” 

Granting property to have been justly acquired, 
to render its continued possession and use valid under 
the moral law, it must be employed in a proper man- 
ner. So far as it is a proprietor, the state is subject 
to this same law of stewardship. Society, in its 
organized capacity, is common trustee for all its 
members. As such, acting through the state, it 
exercises the right to check monopoly, to curb com- 
petition, to prescribe hours of labor, and do whatever 
may be needful to fulfil its duty of promoting the 
prosperity of all. It must use this right, however, 
with due regard to the true development of the in- 
dividual, and not deprive him of the opportunity of 
working out his own mission in life. Under the 
requirements of the moral law, the state is bound to 
protect the weak and assist the necessitous so far as 
may be needful in order to provide for each one 
that liberty in which personality may be achieved, 
and thus promote that moral freedom which is the 
end of political organization. | 

In the discharge of these duties, the state will 
exercise such control over corporations existing by 
its authority as will enable it to conserve the interests 
of all its members, and restrain its creations within 
the limits of the common good. In this way the 
most serious evils which threaten from the growth 
and multiplication of trusts and monopolies may be 
obviated, and the commonwealth delivered from a 
communism of combined wealth more dangerous than 
a communism of dissatisfied poverty. From this 


XIV THE STEWARDSHIP OF PROPERTY 295 


quarter, as is clearly discerned by observant men, the 
chief danger to society and its free institutions now 
threatens. Great corporations and wealthy individuals, 
by enormous contributions to campaign funds, obtain 
unjust influence with the constituted authority. It 
is a grave evil, an evil under which Rome sank and 
England long suffered grievous disaster, when a rail- 
road magnate may purchase a place on the supreme 
bench, or a mine-owner may buy a seat in the senate, 
or a corporation determine who shall represent a state 
in the national congress. 

The world has been too much occupied with ac- 
cumulating material goods and by using them, too 
generally, in material service, to fully appreciate the 
possibilities involved in the right and quality of prop- 
erty. In one sense Professor Herron’s declaration 
that “ property is religion ” is not too strong. Prop- 
erty, the act and result of transfusing the material 
world with one’s own spirit, brings the proprietor 
into genuine fellowship with God, and makes him a 
co-worker in the creation and perfecting of man. The 
product of this assimilation becomes a powerful in- 
strument for executing justice, for manifesting love, 
for regenerating the face of the earth, and realizing 
the brotherhood of mankind. The spirit of steward- 
ship identifies a man with his property, and permits. 
him to apply it only where his own personality may 
accompany. He may not subject it to the unethical 
impulses of caprice, nor abuse it in the recklessness 
that frequently goes with superfluity. What he calls 
his own are still trust funds, and to waste or mis- 
apply is no less immoral than to appropriate the 
property of another. 


296 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


LIII. The Stewardship of Personality 


Man himself is the most valuable product of that 
long process through which he has come into his 
present estate; his own personality is his chief pos- 
session. The ethical law which forbids his holding 
material property in fee simple for selfish use, demands 
that he shall hold his personality also in trust for his 
fellow-men, and this the more because it has a worth 
and a power of relief and support which in all else is 
lacking. 

The measure of greatness is the degree to which 
one realizes that his life belongs to the race. An 
accepted maxim of psychology is that all mental 
states are followed by activity of some sort. We 
cannot feel within us the enthusiasm and power of a 
worthy conception of God, and of that conscious par- 
ticipation in the divine life which is possible to man, 
without earnestly striving to bring that conviction 
into actual existence in the lives of our fellow-men. 
In the law which determined the life of Christ the 
solidarity of human society is manifested. That life 
was an embodiment of the unselfish principle. He 
was among us as one that serveth, and in him it 
became manifest that the law of service is the law of 
power. No man liveth for himself, but each is the 
minister of the whole. The law of sacrifice is the 
law of salvation. Comte’s profound paradox is verified 
in experience, ‘To live for others is but another form 
of living by others ” :— 


“Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense 
Of service which thou renderest.” 


XIV THE STEWARDSHIP OF PERSONALITY 297 


The spirit of social service is the incarnation of the 
Holy Spirit. Its high calling finds none too lofty 
expression in these glowing words of Joseph Mazzini: ° 
“Life is immortal : but the method and time of evolu- 
tion through which it progresses is in our own hands, 
Each of us is bound to purify his own soul as a 
temple; to free it from egotism ; to set before him- 
self, with a religious sense of the importance of the 
study, the problem of his own life; to search out 
what is the most striking, the most urgent need of 
the men by whom it is surrounded, then to interro- 
gate his own faculties and capacity, and resolutely 
and unceasingly apply them to the satisfaction of 
that need.” 

Our hope is constantly fed by the ever-widening 
recognition of this obligation. Much of the world’s 
literature has the coloring of prediction. The yearn- 
ings of humanity are its background, and the utter- 
ances of its poets and seers are its expression. It 
finds a voice in the primeval world-hope as reflected 
in the earliest Hebrew scriptures ; it is borne for- 
ward on an increasing tide of anticipation through all 
their lengthening line of prophets; it takes voice in 
the half-doubtful hope of Socrates’ last address to his 
friends ; and in Virgil’s pages Heathendom speaks its 
expectation of the coming of its king. This is the 
cry of the social element in man’s nature. Among 
the instincts implanted in his original constitution is 
that of brotherhood, of equality, of mutual helpful- 
ness. His personality will not be completely realized 
till these are realized. 

The gradual working out of these instincts and 
capacities in the activities of life is the substance and 


298 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


process of history. We begin to see how masterfully 
the serving Christ enters into these larger human 
relations. We are entering upon a stage in which 
the present individual theology is to be followed and 
completed by a social theology able to interpret pres- 
ent class and institutional movements. The reign of 
selfishness as a social law is giving way as God be- 
comes recognized, in the very material and fabric of 
human society, as an aggressive counteracting force. 
Through this divine indwelling as a vital constructive 
energy in the bosom of humanity, there is fashioned 
a new society of a different character, with its sov- 
ereignty in a different centre, — the kingdom of God 
upon earth. 

Society is so truly a natural product of the devel- 
opment of man that even the selfish acts of men do 
but contribute to the upbuilding of the general wel- 
fare. Unselfish efforts to foster the common good, 
and to act always with high and public ends in view, 
advance the common good much faster, but even 
without this, —still the state is built. In a very 
important sense it is true that the upper class is the 
dangerous class in the community. This results 
from its materialistic and unsocial conception of life, 
which leads it to withdraw from social duties and 
evade social responsibilities. Narrow contentment 
with their own favored lot shuts a numerous body of 
citizens out from a vision of that great realm to which 
their fealty is due. The moralization of life demands 
the continuous devotion of the living will to such 
things as work for social righteousness. The idle 
vagabond and the idle millionaire are brothers; the 
one does not mark the lower, the other the upper line 


XIV THE STEWARDSHIP OF PERSONALITY 299 


of society; both alike mark the defect of social 
qualities. 

Social salvation can be attained or maintained by 
no formulze nor theoretical methods. Nothing avails 
to preserve institutions and to develop humanity but 
to fling one’s personality, with all that it stands for, 
against encroaching evils or the inertia of conditions 
that cramp social life. It is no longer a dream that 
the time will come when men will aspire to office, not 
for ambition’s sake, but in order to serve their coun- 
try and their generation more effectively than is 
possible in lesser stations. There is a description of 
the London councillors which reads like a vision of 
the government of some new City of the Sun. It 
says: “There are men on both sides of the council 
who have dedicated themselves to the service of 
London in the same religious spirit that men dedicate 
themselves to the service of the church, without any 
expectation of a fat living or a comfortable stipend. 
These men have in some instances sacrificed their 
business and injured their health by their devotion 
to the government of London. They are at it all 
day and every day, rendering an unpaid service of 
intelligence and industry which no money could 
buy.” 

The visible work of the world is done on the plat- 
form of a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work. Few 
realize how much society owes the unpaid worker. 
An enormous aggregate of voluntary labor is called 
forth by every church in each locality. The school- 
teacher is everywhere another potent factor in the 
general good account of gratuitous work after “a fair 
day’s work” is done. Exceptionally unfortunate, 


300 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


indeed, is that neighborhood which has not a goodly 
share of the rank and file of its hand and brain 
workers giving time and energy to unrequited toil. 
In the number and coéperation of this chivalry lies 
the hope of social salvation for any community. It 
can be quickened into nobler life only by the vitaliz- 
ing touch of such personal service. 

The democratic tendency of the spirit of steward- 
ship finds remarkable expression in the growth of 
the idea of helpfulness, which more, perhaps, than 
any other one thing, characterizes the present day. 
A few centuries ago the great cathedrals, whose 
“frozen music” still charms and awes us, were built 
by the people for the church. To-day the people 
themselves, led by those in whom the Christ-spirit 
of self-sacrifice is stronger, establish for each other 
the agencies by which treasures of art, of literature, 
of music, of social, zesthetic, intellectual, and physical 
culture, once the heritage of the few, are made the 
common possession of mankind. The level to which 
the whole mass may be lifted, and the rate of eleva- 
tion, depends solely upon the aggregate amount of 
willingness to subordinate personal to general inter- 
est; yet, at the same time, so closely interrelated 
and interdependent are we, that every advance of 
the community ensures the best progress of each 
individual. 

The secret of Christ’s power is in his self-renuncia- 
tion. Through this his life passed out of himself 
into others. Because he was lifted up on the cross 
of self-sacrifice, he still draws all men unto him. The 
vicariousness of his life is its exaltation. The domi- 
nant souls of all ages have been the great servants 


XIV THE STEWARDSHIP OF PERSONALITY 301 


who, being lifted up in service, have found the cross 
athrone. The number is multiplying of those who 
will give themselves to help the weak to become 
strong. As this vicarious spirit becomes more gen- 
erally incarnate, the lower ranks will be raised and 
stood upon their feet as men by the codperation of 
those whose lives exemplify this one purpose, and 
who dare take up Victor Hugo’s inspiring challenge : 
“Sacrifice to the mob! Sacrifice to that unfortu- 
nate, disinherited, vanquished, vagabond, shoeless, 
famished, repudiated, despairing mob; sacrifice to it, 
if it must be, and when it must be, thy repose, thy 
fortune, thy joy, thy country, thy liberty, thy life. 
The mob is the human race in misery. The mob is 
the mournful beginning of the people. The mob is 
the great victim of darkness. Sacrifice to it thy gold, 
and thy blood, which is more than thy gold, and 
thy thought, which is more than thy blood, and thy 
love, which is more than thy thought ; sacrifice every- 
thing to it, everything except justice. Receive its 
complaint ; listen to it, touching its faults and touch- 
ing the faults of others, hear its confession and its 
accusation. Give it thy ear, thy hand, thy arm, thy 
heart. Do everything for it excepting evil. Alas! 
it suffers so much, and it knows nothing. Correct it, 
warn it, instruct it, guide it, train it. Put it to the 
school of honesty. Make it spell truth; show it the 
alphabet of reason; teach it to read virtue, probity, 
generosity, mercy!” 

The redemptive power of compassion was but little 
known to antiquity. Gautama, in obedience to its 
impulse, went forth to teach pity and tenderness and 
self-renunciation, but his teaching went no deeper 


302 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


than to ameliorate the superficial ills of life. The 
ancient myth of the sufferer on Mount Caucasus was 
the attempt of Grecian theology to express the strug- 
gle between fate as represented by Jove, and sym- 
pathy as represented by Prometheus. But neither 
the Stoa nor the Academy knew how to utilize pity 
as the redeeming motive of human life. Not until 
the Christ walked in Judea did pity become a per- 
sonal, transforming power through reaching down 
into the heart of man and changing it into a willing- 
ness to subordinate self-interest to the interests of 
others. It is this form of pity that is renewing the 
world. Only thus do we lift up the lowly, —by 
putting ourselves under them. This codperation of 
rich and poor, of high and low, shall finally sweep 
away 


. “the reeking slums 
That grow like cancers from the palace wall”; 


for the slum is not simply a poor dwelling-place, but 
a condition of mind that is content to dwell in sur- 
roundings less than human. 

Service for one’s fellow-man exalts and purifies all 
other aims. It rules out selfishness, but requires 
increase of self-culture, self-control, and self-respect. 
It enforces the duty of making the most and best of 
ourselves, that we may thus be able most fully to 
serve the world. There is coming a true socialism 
in which mutual need shall require and receive mutual 
service, in which all men may join hands in a brother- 
hood of souls united in mutual helpfulness. A wise 
stewardship of personality will not lose itself in vague 
and indefinite aspiration or activity. Its efforts will 


XIV THE STEWARDSHIP OF PERSONALITY 303 


be successful because specific and individual. Said, 
Mr. Barnett, of Toynbee Hall: “If to-morrow every 
one who cares for the poor would become the friend 
of one poor person, — forsaking all others, — there 
would next week be no insoluble problem of the un- 
employed, and London would be within measurable 
distance of becoming a city of happy homes.” Only 
personal service will touch the hearts of the dis- 
couraged and the wayward and fill them with the 
sweet strength of a loaned personality, till they are 
able to turn again with new hope to strive for better 
things. 


CHAPTER XV 


BRING US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US 
FROM EVIL 


LIV. Society delivering its Members from 
Temptation 


Tue belief is old and widely accepted that God does 
not tempt to evil, but that man zs tempted when he 
zs drawn away of his own lusts and enticed. The in- 
citement to evil is within him, and its origin is in the 
lower element of his nature. This brings the prob- 
lem of the elimination of evil into the arena of, prac- 
tical affairs. Sanitary and social conditions are the 
modes of personal and public character. In spite of 
all exhortation to repentance and to nobler joys, the 
exercise and the issue of moral decision are greatly 
modified by one’s surroundings. A wider knowledge 
is gradually being formulated which shall include 
these two largely neglected phenomena, the internal 
and the external influences affecting man’s character, 
and thus reach at last a true science of society. 

Heredity and environment are twin factors in the 
problem of personal and social salvation. They are 
the upper and nether side of character, and neither 
pauperism nor crime can be rightly understood with- 
out taking them into account. The effect of positive 
law on the development of moral character is very small 
compared with the part played by habits of mind, and 

304 


CHAP. XV SOCIETY DELIVERING FROM TEMPTATION 305 


these are fashioned largely by one’s surroundings. The 
doctrine of evolution enforces the opinion of social 
reformers, that to raise the conditions of life is a more 
effectual method of benefiting man than the endeavor 
to improve human nature by moral teachings alone, 
while life is permitted to work in the opposite direc- 
tion. In accordance with this conviction, temperance 
is becoming a problem in physiology, and ethics is 
taught largely by studies in heredity. The heroes of 
life, who change the currents of evil inheritance into 
streams of good, are those whom society will yet be 
most zealous to crown. The principle of heredity 
will be redeemed and turned to use as a vast moral 
potency, linking men together in a solidarity of cumu- 
lative tendencies toward the right and averse to 
wrong. Tobe well born is to be born of a wholesome 
and virtuous lineage, and humanity will arise in its 
fulness by regeneration in physical birth. The laws 
of heredity better understood and obeyed, social and 
natural vitality perpetuated and increased, the mercy 
of God will be found to be upon thousands of genera- 
tions of them that love him and keep his command- 
ments. 

The summing up of Galton’s “ Studies in Heredity,” 
is in the phrase, “the human race can gradually mod- 
ify its own nature.” Charles Darwin reaches the 
same judgment, which he states in the words: “It 
may be doubted whether any character can be made 
that is distinctive of a race and is constant.” In view 
of such gonclusions by these distinguished students, 
it is clear that we may dismiss the dread of that 
fatalism which has been supposed to brood over the 
doctrine of heredity. If acquired habits are not inevi- 

x 


306 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


tably transmitted by descent, even apart from Weis- 
mann’s denial that they are ever so transmitted, there 
is full justification for surrounding each generation 
with such institutions and conditions as will foster 
good and discourage evil tendencies. The picture of 
civilization still has a fearful background. Miserable, 
groping millions, homeless and imbruted, are born to 
a heritage of gloom and doomed to live and die in 
the dark, without hope and without God in the world. 
These shades, gaunt, hungry, and naked, glide like 
savage beasts through the streets and back avenues 
of our magnificent cities, in numbers sufficient to ap- 
pall us could we but see them. Before these unhappy 
creatures can become truly members of the race, they 
must be raised into manhood, and prevented from 
perpetuating a succession of these dehumanized 
classes. 

This great task society will accomplish only by 
careful attention to the principle of heredity, and full- 
est use of the advantages which it places within her ~ 
hand. Children enter the world with a low vitality, in- 
capable of exercising the physical energy essential to 
maintaining a place among their competitors for suc- 
cess, With those thus born their incapacity is their 
misfortune ; the ctime is either with society, which has 
permitted the weakening of the parents, or with the 
parents themselves, who have exhausted their vital en- 
ergy with vicious excesses and thus transmitted im- 
paired powers to their unfortunate offspring, entailing 
on them a life of failure. As yet neither the indi- 
vidual nor society realizes the tremendous responsi- 
bility of parenthood. This is at least one sense in 
which Letourneau’s words are true: ‘The criminal 


XV SOCIETY DELIVERING FROM TEMPTATION 307 


would not exist, or at least very rarely, if he were not 
produced by society itself.” 

This is a strong incentive to more humane and 
wise social oversight in exchange for the prevalent 
haphazard and wasteful neglect. The cost of main- 
taining the criminal classes is a tax upon society, 
startling in its magnitude. It is far easier to keep 
men and women, and especially children, from _be- 
coming criminals, than to convict and maintain them 
when they have become such. But it is significant 
that the profoundest modern students of criminology 
contend that the volume of crime can be effectively 
diminished only by improvement in the social and 
individual conditions of life. Far better would it 
be for society, as More deciared in his “Utopia,” if 
instead of the Draconian justice with which she 
punishes the violation of her laws, she should stop 
the source of the crime. May not the time come 
when society will fully adopt and become a nursing 
mother to these exfunts perdus ? 

A man does not become a man in the world until 
he has a home and property and a sphere of work 
through which he may feel himself a definite part 
of the order of society. He needs opportunities of 
meeting his fellow-men in equal converse. He re- 
quires the privilege of instituting a family, through 
which he shall come into vital connection with that 
wider social circle of which the family is the unitary 
form. This building of manhood has for many centu- 
ries been recognized theoretically as the central thing 
in social requirement ; for, by the consenting voice 
of all the Christian centuries, the inner life of the 
common man is the central phenomenon in the world. 


308 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


Individuality is now becoming the actual standard of 
value, and to become an individual is the right of 
every man. To help him to secure this right is the 
supreme obligation of society. 

The sanctification of the common life, as the arena 
for the exercise of the higher qualities in man, has 
brought many of the activities and methods of society, 
as well as the disadvantages and surroundings of its 
less favored members, into the ethical field. For- 
merly, men complacently looked to see what was 
unjust righted in a future world. Eternity was to 
give opportunity to those who had none here; but 
now it is recognized that time, with all its opportuni- 
ties and privileges, is equally the right of every man, 
and that society is bound to secure it to him. Pro- 
fessor Nash has tersely presented this changed con- 
ception: “ The social question could not be asked in 
the days of the fathers ; for them every vital question 
was straightway appealed to the other world. But 
now it must be asked. There is to be a new crusade. 
The holy land to be redeemed is under the feet of 
the peasant and the day-laborer.”” Much as may be 
done, however, by improved laws and improved social 
adjustment to remove hindrances from each one’s 
path, all hope of true reform lies in personal charac- 
ter. The obstacles to progress, even in the lower 
class, are largely within. With children, environ- 
ment is the determining factor in the development 
of character. Character, once formed, makes its own 
environment. The standing wonder with those best 
acquainted with the poor, is the large number of 
those who, out of such deteriorating environments, 
grow into honest men and pure women. 


XV SOCIETY DELIVERING FROM TEMPTATION 309 


The Royal Commissioners, in their report to Par- 
liament, bear witness “that the standard of morality 
in these crowded quarters is higher than might be 
expected, looking at the surroundings in which their 
lives were passed.” 

One serious difficulty in the way of removing these 
evils is the cost of personal service which is their 
inexorable price. A personal touch alone can effectu- 
ally command these crippled classes to arise and walk. 
Only when you have made men self-reliant, fonder of 
struggle than of help, have you relieved their poverty. 
To develop this manhood is the only true help for a 
man. Charity that pauperizes and converts the poor 
into professional mendicants is the demon of degrada- 
tion in the guise of an angel of mercy. The most 
discouraging thing to those who seek to lift up the 
degraded, or even the industrious and honest poor, 
is that they are satisfied with their lot and do not 
care to make any strenuous personal effort to improve. 
The result is to confirm the conviction that such peo- 
ple cannot be materially bettered except through a 
continuation of that process of evolution which has 
brought even the lower stratum of humanity to the 
human plane. All nature has struggled forward under 
the constant pressure of forces which work for him 
who learns their laws and coéperates with them, but. 
work against the indolent and the incapable. 

From the fact that human societies, like all organ- 
isms, grow and are not made, we learn that though 
every evil cannot be remedied in a day, yet by modi- 
fying the conditions of its growth we may eliminate 
the evil and establish the good. Human society does 
not merely grow, but is consciously altered by human 


310 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


effort, wherefore no evil, either social or individual, is 
te be accepted as inevitable. The fundamental dis- 
tinction between the animal and the human method 
is that the environment transforms the animal, while 
man as he climbs into higher manhood transforms 
his environment. Science therefore has not yet said 
its last word upon this question of heredity. We 
may accept the doctrine in its extreme form and yet 
believe that its apparent consequences are perpetually 
eluded, as new combinations of race are formed, or as 
training and environment determine life. | 

The effort to raise that portion of humanity which 
is so discouraging because so sodden in stupidity, and 
hence slow to respond to the impact of new ideas, 
presents a most hopeful feature in the fact that classes 
and individuals grow more plastic and responsive to 
new impulses the more developed in mind they become. 
Education, in its transforming power, works like a 
sculptor upon the human countenance and like the 
vital forces of spring upon the human mind. One 
thing to be hopefully expected from a better organi- 
zation of society is that the world will learn neither 
to lose nor to waste so much of its intellectual genius. 
The hindrances of a hard condition may exhaust all 
the energy of the ablest in the bare struggle for ex- 
istence. Although only through struggle does man- 
kind attain to any good, still we need not fear that 
humanity shall ever reach a condition in which that 
struggle shall so far be lacking as to fail to call forth 
all the energies of which human nature at its very 
best is capable. One struggle can never cease,—the 
struggle against nature, which includes the blind 
forces of human passions. Through the help of 


XV SOCIETY DELIVERING FROM EVIL eye: 


society, the individual will escape from the surround- 
ings that doom him toa low and evil existence. Born 
into human opportunities and subject to the great 
spiritual impulses which transform men, he will no 
longer be led into temptation by instincts beyond his 
control. 


LV. Society delivering its Members from Evil 


The evils of social life are chiefly man-made. They 
spring from abuse of privilege or from neglect of 
opportunity. As we look backward through experi- 
ences and forward along the analogies of the world, 
by their light we discover that moral consequences 
are involved in the relations of men, and that right- 
eousness is the condition of freedom and of all higher 
forms of life. This is not an abstract righteousness, 
but is embodied in humanity and displayed in the 
ethical order of the world. It is developed only in 
personality actually in contact with the relationships 
of life. In the realization of man’s spiritual life, in 
the process of achieving freedom from the dominion 
of evil, lie the germs of all political and social progress. 

The fundamental contrast in evolution is between 
environment and organism. Translating these scien- 
tific axioms into social terms, the personal quality of 
men,.and women is greatly affected by the conditions 
in which they are brought up. In the judgment of 
those experienced by long and intimate contact with 
degraded and undeveloped lives, from whom largely 
the vicious and criminal class is recuperated, these 
persons are not less sinned against than sinning. 
The very teachableness of childhood is a pledge that 
those unhappy little ones, whose every sight is of wick- 


312 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


edness and degradation, whose every sound is of vul- 
garity or profanity, whose every ethical teaching is of 
disregard for all law, both human and divine, shall 
have these things wrought into the very fibres of their 
being. One may predict with reasonable certainty 
that the circumstances which surround those living 
in the slums means, in most cases, the ruin of the 
child brought up in them. 

To eliminate the product of the slums, it will be 
necessary to eliminate the slum out of which he grows. 
So longas his vicious environment remains unchanged, 
there is small hope of changing him. All efforts to 
reclaim this class must begin with the conditions 
of life against which his very existence is a protest. 
Regenerate the individual, is the cry of many, but it 
is a half truth; the reorganization of the society 
which he makes and which makes him is the other 
half. Ina great speech on Modern Dwellings, Lord 
Shaftesbury once said that he was certain that he 
spoke the truth, and a truth which could be confirmed 
by the testimony of all experienced persons conver- 
sant with the working classes, that until their domi- 
ciliary conditions were Christianized, all hope of moral 
or social improvement was utterly vain. “We edu- 
cate our children,” he continued, “down to the poor- 
est class to read and to think, and in the future the 
destinies of our country will be placed in their hands. 
It must, therefore, be the concern of every right- 
thinking man to do all that in him lies to see that 
they are provided with decent homes so that, by their 
moral, physical, and social improvement, England 
may ever continue to be Christian and prosperous.” 
A healthy home is far more effective than the spas- 


XV SOCIETY DELIVERING FROM EVIL NE 


modic and outward efforts of philanthropic and reli- 
gious societies. 

Those helps to the physical, social, and intellectual 
life, which the normal home provides, are totally 
wanting in the overcrowded tenement. Here the 
home can scarcely be said to exist. In certain areas 
of London the land is covered with a network of 
houses in which families are closely packed together, 
existing —not living —eating and sleeping in one 
small dark room. Official testimony shows that of 
the population of Glasgow, twenty-five per cent live 
in houses of one apartment; twenty-five per cent of 
the two-roomed houses and fourteen per cent of the 
one-roomed houses contain lodgers—strange men 
and women and husbands and wives intermingled 
within the four walls of one narrow chamber, often 
furnished with but one bed. The physical and moral 
effect of this one-room system is beyond all descrip- 
tion. Thousand of such dwellings have five, six, and 
seven inmates, and hundreds of them are inhabited 
by from eight te thirteen persons. In Spitalfields one 
house of nine rooms was reported as containing an 
average of seven persons in each room, and in no room 
more than one bed. This tenement-house evil unfortu- 
nately is not confined to the great centres of popula- 
tion, but is becoming a serious menace in the smaller - 
cities. Only those familiar with the subject can 
imagine how large is the tenement population and to 
what extent the typical tenement-house evils prevail 
in many of the lesser cities of America and Europe. 
Out of such hotbeds of vice and crime and defect of 
human qualities as these, nothing can be expected but 
a vicious, a criminal, and a debased race of beings. 


314 : THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP, 


An awakened public conscience will eventually 
recognize its responsibility for such conditions, and 
will feel that these preventable sins and this enor- 
mous aggregate of suffering lie at the doors of those 
who, having the power, will not take the trouble to 
remove the causes which inevitably tend to these 
results. It is a sad indictment of human nature 
that, after nineteen centuries of Christianity, it toler- 
ates a system which somehow suffers the city slum 
and the village lair to grow up in the heart of a 
Christian civilization. Nor is it a sufficient defence 
to say that such conditions are due to the -improvi- 
dence of those who live in these places. The con- 
ditions are the nurses as well as the products of this 
type of character. This very fact, however, contains 
an element of hope; for so long as certain conditions 
produce evil, removing the conditions will, in large 
measure, remove the evils themselves. It is true, as 
a general proposition, that the lowest may be vastly 
elevated by moralizing surroundings. To prevent 
the rise of a criminal and dependent class is far 
easier and more economical than to correct and care 
for them when fully developed. Environment is fore- 
most among the agencies working upon the formation 
of character. Stronger than heredity, especially in 
childhood, it can overcome hereditary influences ; 
therefore it is plainly the duty of society to produce 
about the child of the tenements and the slums an 
environment in which better influences shall pre- 
dominate. 

The enormous loss of health and life and personal 
worth which society suffers daily from failure to de- 
liver its members from these evils passes computa- 


xv SOCIETY DELIVERING FROM EVIL ~ 315 


tion. The death rate among the very poor is from 
two to three times greater than among those more 
favorably situated. Nor does the influence of unsani- 
tary conditions terminate upon the physical health. 
It affects the whole physical, mental, and moral con- 
stitution. It is difficult to estimate the actual waste 
of life through overcrowding. The death rate proves 
but little, largely for the reason shown by a fearful 
sentence in a recent report on this subject to Parlia- 
ment: “The very poor die comparatively. seldom 
in their homes!” In London one out of every five 
in this class dies in the hospital, workhouse, or 
prison. Two die in the neighborhood of Drury Lane 
and Seven Dials for every one in the locality of Bed- 
ford Square. Of all the children who die in Glasgow 
before completing their fifth year, thirty-two per cent 
die in the houses of one apartment, and not two per 
cent in houses of five apartments and upwards. A 
large proportion of the children of the poor in the 
great centres of population have scrofulous or tuber- 
cular ailments, due largely to foul air, overcrowding, 
and dirty surroundings. When it is remembered 
that better sanitary conditions would do much to 
obviate these conditions, how can an intelligent and 
wealthy society justify the barbarism which with- 
holds from so large a portion of its members such 
literal necessities of life as fresh air, decency, and 
cleanliness ? 

This question has also an economic bearing of 
great weight. The welfare of a nation depends upon 
the health, physical and moral, of its sons; the 
wealth of a commonwealth depends upon the pro- 
ductive capacity of its members. The productivity 


316 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


of labor is diminished by every drain upon the 
laborer’s strength from insufficient food, poor tene- 
ments, or unhealthy occupation. There is a general 
consensus of opinion as to the physical deterioration 
of dwellers in overcrowded districts. This appears 
even more in their children than in themselves, a 
result which the Earl of Compton describes as a 
case, not of the sins of the fathers being visited on 
the children, but of the sins of the country being 
visited on the country, by the fact of half-useless 
citizens being born into the world. When France, 
some little time since, drew ten thousand conscripts 
for her army from ten industrial and factory depart- 
ments, nine thousand and nine hundred were rejected. 
The Board of Health in Massachusetts found a few 
years ago an average annual loss from premature 
deaths of workingmen, to themselves, to their fami- 
lies, and to the public, of two hundred and seventy- 
six thousand years of service, amounting to over 
one-half of their normal working period. An English 
Board of Inquiry recently ascertained that upon the 
lowest calculation in overcrowded districts, every 
workman or workwoman lost about twenty days in 
the year from sheer exhaustion. 

Since the fundamental right of manhood is to be 
a man, having all the rights and the opportunities 
requisite to the full development of a human per- 
sonality, society will ultimately find it profitable to 
provide such environment for each of its members 
as will permit this development of manhood. Gradu- 
ally it is being recognized that in the midst of pre- 
vious social and economic forces, and even under the 
régime of political liberty, great numbers have lacked 


XV SOCIETY DELIVERING FROM EVIL oF] 


the elementary opportunities of life, —condemned 
from the beginning by their surroundings to a de- 
graded existence. The factors of the social problem 
change as progress is made. The first thing to be 
done, obeying that law of social responsibility to 
which man became subject in becoming master of 
his own development, is to equalize conditions. 
Proper housing, decent domestic surroundings, bet- 
ter opportunities for moral and intellectual culture, 
all this will become at once feasible and actual when 
society recognizes its obligations towards all its mem- 
bers. Out of equalized conditions and opportunities 
will rise a race much nearer equality of capacity and 
of desires, yet with the utmost freedom of individua- 
tion. 

A most hopeful feature of the time is the dawning 
recognition that every human being is a many-sided 
soul to be set in harmonious relations with the whole 
order of which it is a part. This vital sense of the 
unity of God and man and nature, through its strong 
grasp upon that great principle of relationship which 
makes every occupation or movement significant in its 
wide bearings, gives realization to that deep and com- 
prehensive humanity implied in the race-conscious- 
ness and which shall finally bring us to that unity 
of aim and achievement toward which the prophets 
have been looking these many years. There is a 
social solidarity in which all men are included, bound 
together in material and moral well or ill being. In 
the midst of a great debate, Mr. Gladstone once 
spoke of the working classes as “our own flesh and 
blood.” The House of Commons was doubtful 
whether it heard aright, so incredible did it seem 


318 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


that a statesman should found great conclusions upon 
the premise of our common humanity. All social 
legislation will ultimately start from the idea of the 
oneness of mankind as the Magna Charta of the 
world. 

The survival of the fittest appears in human life 
with undiminished force, but with changed applica- 
tion. The interest of society as a whole is to see to 
it that the morally fittest shall actually survive and 
prosper. The fittest for social survival are not the 
unscrupulous, the self-seeking, but those who seek 
others’ good equally with their own. That these 
should be enabled to live is the first and greatest 
commandment of social self-preservation. This can- 
not be secured by spasmodic and unrelated efforts. 
Burke defines law as “beneficence acting by rule,” 
and benevolence must be built into institutions be- 
fore it becomes permanent or effective. 

The Christian spirit is no dim and mystic phantom, 
whose field of activity is in the mysterious and dis- 
tant. It lays hold upon the practical affairs of life, 
transforming politics, business methods, industrial 
relations, social conditions, lifting them all to higher 
levels. It will yet bring all men, in all their activi- 
ties and relations, unto the measure of the stature 
of the fulness of Christ; for dy this man God will 
judge the world in righteousness. How great a task 
yet remains to make ready for that judgment! How 
shall we who build the tenement houses and herding- 
places of the outcast fare before him who ate with 
publicans and sinners? How will our finger-tip 
charity endure the gaze of him who went about 
doing good? Nhat shall excuse our self-indulgent 


XV SOCIETY DELIVERED FROM EVIL 319 


neglect of the multitude to one who counted not his 
life dear unto himself, but freely gave it up “for us 
men and for our salvation,” that all might be delivered 
from evil! 


LVI. Society delivered from Evil 


The present stage of humanity is the outcome of © 
a process which has wrought and is working steadily 
for the advancement of human kind. In recognition 
of that process and in codperation with it lies the 
hope of the future. Each successive stage of animal 
life is not the preceding stage on a higher plane, but 
the preceding stage modified in conformity to the 
environment from which it has just ascended. Every 
new attainment in the way of social advantage fur- 
nishes a richer and nobler environment, the power 
and promise of which enter into all that follows, and 
endows it with constantly increasing privilege and 
potency. Man thus embodies and gathers up into 
himself at each period the essential values of all 
preceding stages. 

Most human plans and anticipations, unfortunately, 
assign too limited a sphere to the future of man. 
Comparatively seldom is he regarded as a being of 
immortal destiny, whose eternal future is largely con- 
ditioned both in quantity and quality by the experi- 
ences of the present. Never can social ideals be 
pursued with becoming earnestness, nor kept in 
proper relation to the realities and possibilities of 
human life, except when they are considered as sub- 
ordinate parts of a grander economy, into which man 
is born by this unfolding of his capacities and helped 
to attain his well-being in a life perfected in conform- 


320 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


ity to the character of God. The early Greek thinkers 
did indeed seek for an ultimate end of man’s individ- 
ual life ; Aristotle, especially, investigated the succes- 
sive forms assumed in the organization of society; 
but inquiry for a meaning in human history as a unit, 
for a connected plan of historical development, was 
not pursued. Still less did it occur to any of the old 
_ thinkers to see in this continuity and organic unity 
the intrinsic nature of the world. 

From Protagoras’ claim that “man’’—the individual 
man — “is the measure of all things,” the advance is 
considerable to the teaching of Socrates, that the 
measure of all things is the universal man, —the deep 
and permanently human, — not the man of superficial 
purposes and undeveloped life. Still higher is the 
truth attained in Plato’s lofty idea of God as the 
measure of all things. The conception of man as a 
manifestation of God unites these two views, and thus 
becomes as intensive in character as it is extensive in 
range. Its depth corresponds to its breadth, so that 
it fulfils all other ideals of man and includes all 
systems of social regeneration. This is in reality 
the Christian ideal, of which the essential content is 
righteousness, and righteousness is always a personal 
quality. For tiis reason the Christ remains the un- 
attained exemplar of humanity. In him this ideal 
finds embodiment in life, in a life that is real, in- 
dividual, and yet typical. Even by the New Testa- 
ment writers he is regarded as the representative 
man. Zhou hast put all things under his | man's | 
feet, ... we see not yet all things put under him, 
BUT WE SEE JESuS. He is not simply, like Plato, the 
embodiment of great thoughts. He does not stand 


XV SOCIETY DELIVERED FROM EVIL 321 


for abstract truth, but for the truth as it is made 
definite and practical in human life. 

Through Jesus we learn the great lesson that re- 
demption extends to the whole man and to the whole 
of man’s activities. In him also we see wrought out 
in actual experience the lesson we are so slow to 
learn, that God’s will for us is not limited by our 
wish for ourselves, that he does not merely give what 
we ask, but that he translates our feeble and blind 
petition into the great meanings, into the wider sig- 
nificance which only he perceives our lives to bear, 
and grants us not what we wish but what we want. 
He thus teaches us great things out of his divine 
law, and we learn to know in the depths of our con- 
sciousness that in the economy of God there is no 
waste; that knowledge is acquired in the deepening 
of individual character through suffering, with a gain 
of new tenderness, of closer sympathy, and of in- 
creased patience. All the past, as it is wrought into 
experience, is borne forward with us and becomes 
part of our equipment to meet new revelations, to 
triumph over new difficulties, to bear new messages 
of sympathy and love to our fellows, and to partake 
in fuller measure of the possibilities of life. It is 
doubtless a genuine note that Browning strikes 
when he sings, 

* Later ots 
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love.” 

God is love, and God himself is man’s life. There- 
fore only through living shall man learn to know 
God. It is impossible by searching to find him out; 
by the path of life alone shall men be able to come 


nigh unto him. 
Y 


322 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


Even the physical nature of man is to be reached at 
last, and ennobled by the transforming effect of the 
manifestation of God in the spirit of life and human- 
ity. The course of man’s destiny rolls steadily forward, 
till all wrongs are righted and all evil removed in 
the deliverance of man from the bondage of corrup- 
tion into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 


“ Manas yet is being made, and ere the crowning Age of ages, 
Shall not eon after eon pass and touch him into shape? 


“ All about shadow still, but while the races flower and fade 
Prophet-eyes may catch a glory slowly gaining on the shade, 
Till the peoples all are one, and all their voices blend in choric 
Hallelujah to the Maker ‘ It is finished. Man is made.’” 


This inspiring expectation of continuous develop- 
ment removes the idea of finality from every present 
stage of progress and from every form of religious 
faith. Ancient philosophy regarded the sum of exist- 
ence as a finished total; modern philosophy has 
learned to consider truth not as a fixed quantity but 
as an indefinite relationship. Immeasurably, there- 
fore, as any form of truth may tower above any or 
all preceding forms, it is still but a temporary halt- 
ing-place, a Pilgrim’s arbor, on the ascending way to 
the Interpreter’s'house. Thus as age succeeds to age, 
the later, standing upon the shoulders of the earlier, 
will correct its errors, will enlarge its vision, will 
strengthen its spiritual impulse. Witha growing hu- 
manity there can be neither final science nor religion. 

Comparison of other religions with Christianity has 
changed man’s attitude toward the ethnic faiths. We 
have learned to recognize in them not only the con- 
tinuous approach of God to his children, but man’s 


XV SOCIETY DELIVERED FROM EVIL 323 


age-long feeling after God if haply he might find him. 
In them all the earnest only of the spirit has been 
given ; itsfullfruition is yet to come. The direct in- 
fluence of the spirit of God upon the human spirit 
gives a continuous impulse to the spiritual develop- 
ment of the race. By this codperation men are so 
transformed, inspired, and spiritualized that they 
become truly sons of God, and the society resulting 
from their mutual relationships constitutes what the 
Christ called the Kingdom of Heaven. The wisdom 
is not yet exhausted that lies in the words of the pagan 
slave Epictetus: “If a person could be persuaded of 
this principle as he ought, that we are all originally 
descended from God, and that he is the father of men 
and gods, I conceive he would never think of himself 
meanly or ignobly.” This is the most potent agency 
through which God is working out the salvation of 
the world. He is increasing the personality of man, 
and in this is giving him power and superiority to all 
things and to all conditions. After one of his fields 
of carnage, Frederick of Prussia said to his grizzled 
marshal, who had wrung victory from defeat, after 
the king himself had fled from the field: “ Zeithen, 
you Christians fight as if you Joved death!” “Ah, 
sire, under your majesty, we serve a greater king; 
in his service death is gain. If we had only the re-_ 
ligion of our king, there would be no victories.”’ 

A radical difference between the Christian and the 
pagan conceptions of spirituality, lies in the idea of 
the method by which it is attained. The Buddhist, 
as well as Plato, thought of this holiness as a con- 
dition laboriously attained by good works, and, even 
in the heavenly life, still maintained by them and 


324 THE FAMILY OF GOD CHAP. 


needing to be constantly fed with fresh fuel from 
their fires. The Christian regards it as a codperation 
with God in the development of a free personality, 
constantly realizing itself more and more in the pur- 
suit of a holiness which is related to God, and hence 
is an ever-growing characteristic. Under the tute- 
lage of this aspiration the spirit of man plumes its 
wings like an eagle for ever loftier flights. The 
future is dynamic with latent forces. There are new 
powers at work visibly among us, and increasing from 
generation to generation. They will recreate the 
world and enlarge the souls of those who live here 
when we are gone. We ourselves have been made 
greater than our predecessors by the mighty historic 
days, the days of great achievement, of expanding 
hopes, which lie between us and them ; sothe grander 
days, calling to nobler attainment, will make a nobler 
race of those who follow. “ A great present,” declared 
Professor Swing, “implies a great future. Great 
years pass into great centuries.” 

Materialistic philosophy endeavors to explain all 
social growth as the outcome of physical necessity, 
and to make all crime the result of constitutional 
disease or vicious education. The doctrine of the 
immanent God is exactly the opposite of this. It 
triumphs through faith in the responsiveness of 
human nature to the demands of goodness. It holds 
firmly by the hope and conviction that in the most 
depraved there is some fountain of spiritual life like 
fresh springs under the salt sea; that there is a 
dim groping after purity, some slight feeling of moral 
obligation, some faint longing for release from the 
thraldom of iniquity. Of this divine optimism Jesus 


XV SOCIETY DELIVERED FROM EVIL 325 


was the fullest exponent. The human heart rests in 
the conviction that such a being as we assume God 
to be will draw out the best and fullest that is in us, 
and well not fail nor be discouraged till he have set 
judgment in the earth. 

The feeling also is common that whatever aspira- 
tion he has given us, he has given in order that 
through this as a channel he might give us some 
other good thing. This expectation, usually based 
upon the divine love, may equally well be a recogni- 
tion of the divine sense of responsibility. Well not 
the gudge of all the earth do right? God’s respon- 
sibility to man is as real as man’s to God. Personal 
relations are mutual. 

This consciousness of the divine co-working begets 
a larger and freer spirit which shall find its fitting 
sphere of activity in ennobling human life, and shall 
bring forth gigantic reforms and moral achievements, 
preventive and palliative, of which the beginnings 
cannot yet be conceived. Already, as society ex- 
pands under the influence of this codperation, there 
is developing a higher type of citizenship, and a 
clearer sense of social accountability. The ideal of a 
noble state is before the eyes of the spiritual man, 
and he is resolutely setting himself to make it real. 
History is prophetic. It demonstrates that godliness — 
is profitable for the life that now is; it assures us 
that the forces for good are the triumphant forces ; 
and it promises, by all the weight of experience, and 
all the momentum of the present, that the days are 
not behind but before us in which the kingdom of 
God shall be manifest among men in a society 
delivered from evil. 


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CHAPTER XVI 
GOD FILLING ALL IN ALL 


LVII. All Worlds One in the Being of God 


THE conception of God as immanent in a universe 
which culminates in spirit, becomes a most valuable 
contribution to our system of thought in the rein- 
forcement which it brings to the idea of immortality. 
It has always been felt that, 


“. . . Could you joint 
This flexile, finite life once tight 
Into the fixed and infinite,” 


it would add to the present work-a-day world an 
unimagined glory. The activity of the spirit has 
now taken such clearly defined form that its future 
course and effect may be anticipated with all the 
moral certainty of a long induction of facts tending 
steadily in one direction. The past has shown a 
growing manifestation of God as the parent and 
leader of humanity ; a growing recognition of men as — 
of one blood and of one destiny; a growing incli- | 
nation to apply this principle in dealings between 
man and man ; a growing disposition to make friend- 
ship —altruism—take the place of selfishness; a 
growing confidence that such relationships, being 
grounded in God, are more enduring than the granite 
hills, and will not cease with this material environ- 
329 


330 GODFALBLAINGAUL CHAP. 


ment in which they begin. Such a view reinterprets 
God, the world, history, human nature, and _ hope- 
fully awaits the final gathering of humanity as an 
unbroken family in its Father’s house. 

The vast expansion of the universe in the advance 
of modern science has added immensely to this 
assurance, and has taken nothing of value away. 
God is all in all space. The early terrors of those 
who supposed that enlarging the material form of his 
manifestation separated the children of God's spirit 
from their Father have been found to be groundless. 
The effect of this enlarged knowledge is a persuasion, 
now probably too firmly fixed to be again easily 
shaken, that increase of quantity has no necessary 
effect upon quality, and that he who was Creator and 
Sovereign under a geocentric astronomy may con- 
tinue Creator and Sovereign when that is replaced 
by the modern hypothesis in all its grandeur. Borne 
on the wings of light, as it darts on its almost limit- 
less journey through fifty, a hundred, a thousand 
years of darkness, there comes to us the message 
that the God of earth is the God also of Neptune and 
of the fixed stars. It has been discovered that the 
same laws of refraction, the same laws of chemical 
combination, the same balance of centrifugal and 
centripetal forces, prevail throughout the mighty 
frame of the physical order. With the principles 
and conditions that are familiar to us here in our 
hand as the clew, we may walk fearlessly forth into 
all the chambers, and venture down any of the cor- 
ridors of our Father’s house, sure that it will not 
break nor fail us till it has brought us directly before 
his face. 


xvi ALL WORLDS ONE IN THE BEING OF GOD 331 


Even more transforming upon men’s imaginations 
is the modern understanding of duration. The ex- 
tension of the universe in time is equally great, and 
involves equally far-reaching consequences, with its 
extension in space. When men supposed that fifty 
or sixty centuries covered the entire period of the 
earth’s existence, and that some brief years, few and 
evil, should determine its future, it is not strange 
that the imagination should fasten upon the two 
termini of this short course as of particular moment 
and particularly marked by the presence of God. It 
seemed natural that the creative energy which brought 
all things into being should actively manifest itself at 
the beginning, and that, in just antithesis, a day was 
set that should conclude and pass judgment upon the 
course of things from that beginning unto the close. 
The widening conception of duration as limitless has 
not diminished, but increased, the awe and the mystery 
which formerly surrounded the beginning and the end. 

Since the reach of our intelligence has already 
stretched out over enormous periods and areas, which 
till recently were quite beyond our ken, and have 
found them still luminous and vibrant with God, it 
is evident that there is no scientific justification 
for denying that there may be other worlds which 
our spirits may inhabit. The tendency of psycho- 
logical research is more and more to reduce “this 
solid seeming world” toa tissue of objectified thought. 
In dissolving its actual materiality, science removes 
the strongest objection that has heretofore been made 
to the continuance of earth-born spirits in a state 
beyond earthly conditions. The seen is ever tem- 
poral; the unseen, eternal. 


332 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP. 


We have, indeed, long accustomed ourselves to 
think of another world of spirits as existing, even 
within the world of observation, unseen but not 
unreal. There is nothing unreasonable in the sup- 
position that God should cause many spirit worlds to 
intersphere and move forward, each in its appointed 
course, without interference and without antagonism, 
so that as each spiritual existence grew into the realm 
of a higher spiritual order, it should pass into it by 
what might be called a natural spiritual birth. Life 
constantly increases in complexity as it ascends, and 
death’s disrobing on the hither side may mean but 
the enrobing of immortality on the other. 


LVIII. This Earth-Drama continued on Another Stage 


The keystone of the great arch from terrestrial to 
celestial life is that supreme will which embraces and 
controls all events and all beings throughout universal 
space and time. By this the entire whole is woven 
into a smooth and continuous web of intellectual rela- 
tions. In man’s spirit these relations have become 
conscious, and he is knit into oneness with God in 
the very fibres of his being. This is a spiritual union 
which, from the necessities of the case, must be eternal. 
Those who have: been taken up into this vital con- 
nection are known of God and loved by him, and 
whom God loves cannot disappear into nothingness 
and pass away. Man’s immortality is grounded in 
God. To one who looks upon the whole of nature 
as God’s gradual rising into higher manifestation, the 
continuous existence of the human spirit needs no 
further proof. 

Certain queries which we might desire answered, as 


XVI THIS EARTH-DRAMA CONTINUED 333 


to the quality and constitution of the future life, it 
were useless to ask; but as to its reality and its 
superiority over this we may be sure. The whole 
trend of that progressive order, which has borne 
humanity thus far upon its current, sweeps him still 
onward in obedience to the law of correlation by which 
the first things and the last of a succession of phe- 
nomena are inseparably linked together. If, accord- 
ing to a not too spiritually disposed form of science, 
that divine energy which is manifested through the 
whole universe is the same energy that wells up in 
man as consciousness, that fact is sufficient to secure 
continuation of the finite spirit in which the spirit 
of the universe is thus individualized, after material 
forms have served their purpose and have passed 
away. This is the natural conclusion of that progres- 
sive individualization of God in humanity which has 
been going forward through the ages. Without this 
immortality of the spirit, that growing beauty, which 
has been developing through all the eons since the 
evolution of this course of things began, is a meaning- 
less dream, —a passing cloud condensed into form 
and visibility for a brief moment, only to vanish into 
invisibility again. 

Entirely apart, however, from this deduction, which 
follows naturally from the enormous energies so 
steadily converging toward one point and so persist- 
ently working out what has seemed a definite pur- 
pose, is the sanction derived for the idea of the soul’s 
immortality from the method by which it has come 
to be. Through the entire course of nature, and 
through all the geological ages, there has been a 
gestation of the divine energy to come to birth in 


334 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP. 


man’s spirit. That which in the animal is still em- 
bryonic life, whose conditions are comprehended 
within the necessary processes of nature, has reached 
in the human soul the independent existence of 
a completed individuality. Self-consciousness, the 
power of turning thought in upon itself, marks the 
attainment of a new starting-point—the founding 
of a higher kingdom of the spirit, whose separate 
existence and free activities have risen above the 
entire realm of necessitated being. The rudimentary 
soul begotten with the body uses this as the sphere 
and medium of its unfolding, while it grows into its 
proper rounded and full personality, —the body a 
matrix for the soul as the maternal womb for the 
body. Its growth is incomplete at whatever point 
the earthly life terminates, whether in infancy or 
old age. 

Except man were intended to be the climax of 
material existence, the whole history of the earth 
previous to his appearance would be meaningless. 
This analogy with the past gives strong presumptive 
evidence also for the future. Attaining a certain 
stage brings the organism under different laws; the 
human stage once attained, the offspring are in that 
rank. They may fall to the bottom, but may not fall 
out of the human scale. The cellular life that 1s 
communicated is human. As the embryo of the 
viviparous animal is separated from the mother after 
being adjusted to a new medium by previous growth, 
so is the spirit adapted by the experiences of earth 
to a succeeding life. Life at any stage is made possi- 
ble only by this anticipative preparation. There is 
an argument for immortality in embryology which 


XVI THIS EARTH-DRAMA CONTINUED 335 


has not been sufficiently developed. In this it is 
seen that lower stages of animal life may have passed 
away as such, but they have passed on into human 
life and in itare risen again. Each lower race lives in 
the higher, till man is reached. The highest attain- 
ment of each lower is preserved in the higher or- 
ganism. So the earth-man, vanish from the earth as 
an individual though he may, emerges into a higher 
life, not despoiled of his true goods, but prepared to 
rise to still higher development of his distinctive 
qualities, —self-consciousness and personality. 

Life, wherever manifested, is divine. Though oft- 
times appearing repulsive in its bestial forms, it is 
because we look at it from above, and not with regard 
to the infinite progress through which it has come to 
its present degree. With God there is neither upper 
nor under, neither high nor low, but that which is 
crude is undeveloped, that which is perfect is mature. 
Spirit cannot realize itself except as the result of a 
process of discipline through conflict. The earth, 
then, becomes the gestating mother of all, the divine 
in it working out into gradual release from baser 
forms into vegetable, animal, human, and _ finally 
spiritual life; but, by the laws of conservation of 
energy and correlation of forces, each up-lift toward 
the spirit is counterbalanced by corresponding de- 
duction from the lower order. This will eventually 
be exhausted and will vanish away. What is the 
interpretation of this sublime result but that the 
forces put forth from the divine energy shall at last 
return to him in the form of individualized and holy 
personality ? 

We have developed, under the divine instruction, till 


336 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP. 


the ideas of infinity and eternity form the framework 
of all our thinking. These ideas are strengthened by 
the extension of our intellectual horizon until it em- 
braces the most diverse nations and grasps within its 
attention the long current of the stream of history, 
the uniformity of nature, and the boundless measures 
of the universe. The grandeur of the theatre upon 
which man is called to play his part exalts our con- 
ception of his work, and makes more firm our belief 
that in the faithful performance of duty he is acquir- 
ing such fellowship with God as assures him of im- 
mortal life.’ We can forecast the future only by 
projecting the active principles of this life into post- 
mundane conditions, and our persuasion is no less 
sure when we understand revelation to be within 
man than when we supposed it to be from without, 
since even in that case the information, in order to 
be intelligible, must needs be conveyed in terms of 
this life and its experiences. 

This at least is sure: science discloses, now opera- 
tive in the universe, causes and powers which, when 
they have opportunity to achieve their natural results, 
will work out into effects far beyond the reach of our 
highest. conceptions. At present our environment is 
adapted to us and we to it; but it is clear that the 
future environment of the race, even upon this earth, 
will demand a higher and more specialized manhood 
than now prevails, and so we may have hope that the 
spirit’s future environment shall call forth a higher and 
a worthier life than we have here attained. Closer 
observation in recent years discovers that the pro- 
cesses which man takes up and consciously carries on 
are often merely extensions or accelerations of pro- 


XVI THIS EARTH-DRAMA CONTINUED Son 


cesses already going forward in unconscious nature. 
The higher the organism, the less waste. Plants fer- 
tilized by insects produce less pollen than those 
lacking conspicuous flowers. Fruits attractive to 
birds produce fewer seeds than cryptogamous plants, 
whose germs are myriad. The great mortality of 
savage life and the prevalence in it of infanticide 
tend to disappear at higher stages of social evolu- 
tion. The more fully developed the soul, the more 
likely are its individual functions to continue. 

Thus our convictions rest upon the strongest pos- 
sible foundations, —the persistence of God. God is 
the constant architect of life. He is the continuous 
builder of ever-widening structures. Floating, ethe- 
real matter comes together into one formless mass. 
But this mass is again disrupted, seemingly destroyed 
and diffused again into nothingness by the explosive 
energy of its own centripetal forces. But no, it is 
only the formation of an orderly succession of worlds, 
each with its own proper motion and distinguishing 
featurés. Transitions into new forms, though differ- 
ing in manifestation, continue the same in substance 
through all the various stages and changes, each in 
succession verging more and more toward conscious- 
ness, and that culminating in personality. The sig- 
nificant truth characterizing all these transitions is 
that the highest quality of each of these lower forms 
is absorbed into and perpetuated by a new and higher 
form. The eternal world, then, is not wholly a world 
beyond time and the grave; it is rather a power anda 
condition which are latent throughout the whole of 
the earth period, waiting only till the individual soul 
shall break through its larval shell to suffuse it with 

Z 


338 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP. 


their ineffable radiance. It is imperative to live for 
to-day with a whole heart and complete devotion, for 
to-day is an inseparable part of eternity. 


LIX. This Mortal putting on Immortality 


Issuing from the Almighty, the mighty futures 
already experienced on earth are prophetic of greater 
futures beyond. The God who is doing these things 
may do even greater things. Man’s actions become 
‘ his life; God’s actions express his life. As God’s 
life becomes more fully reflected in man’s activities, 
man will more fully image forth God. In -attempt- 
ing, therefore, to span that chasm which to every 
mortal sense is bottomless, and across it throw a 
bridge whereon confidence may walk with unfaltering 
tread, we may ground the shoreward buttress firmly 
upon God’s ultimate purpose, in which alone man 
finds the reason and support of his being, either here 
or hereafter. This foundation will bear much greater 
weight than has ever yet been put upon it. But the 
question as to the true meaning of man’s life must 
be put to man at his highest, not to the undeveloped 
troglodyte nor to the degenerate Terra-del-Fuegan. 

In Jesus of Nazareth for the first time a perfect 
man walked the earth. His spiritual development 
marks the capacity of the human soul for growth in 
the likeness of God. It is therefore of surpassing 
significance that he felt himself to be identified with 
the life of God. No doubt of this ever stirred the 
calm surface of his consciousness, nor rose like the 
mists of morning to obscure his view of the unbroken 
reaches of life eternal. To him man’s life consisted 
in such close and personal relationship with God as 


XVI THIS MORTAL PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 339 


should make them inseparable from each other — 
man living in God, God living in man. 

This firm consciousness of Jesus is the inalienable 
heritage of every soul of kindred mould. By the light 
of his experience we may read our own life-runes. In 
him God’s purpose stands revealed. Christ reveals 
God —is God’s self-revelation of himself. But he 
also reveals man. He is the normal, the perfect man. 
He illustrates the operation of the eternal spirit 
within man, by which he is enabled to order his life 
in time with reference to the eternal principles which 
determine his activity. His life was centred in reali- 
ties beyond the range of physical processes, and there- 
fore not subject to their vicissitudes, but capable of 
imperishable existence through oneness of life with 
God. He thus reveals men unto themselves, and the 
unfolding of his life revealed to men their own possi- 
bilities. ‘C’est un des grands principes du Chris- 
tianisme,’ says Pascal, ‘que tout ce qui est arrivé 
a Jesus-Christ doit se passer dans l’A4me et dans le 
corps’ de chaque Chretien.”” As the typical man, 
Christ’s experiences show forth what God can do 
and what he desires to do for every man. God 
dwells in every soul according to its capacity to 
receive him. 

When we firmly grasp the conviction that “He 
hath made us for himself,” and this to the end that 
we may attain unto a full-grown man, unto the meas- 
ure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, we know 
that our goal is not yet reached and our course 
is therefore not yet finished. The growing ethical 
consciousness is satisfied with an opportunity to at- 
tain this highest good of a perfected personality in a 


340 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP. 


development, which reaches beyond the empirical life 
of man and beyond the order of material nature, into 
participation in that moral order of the universe 
which is grounded in the supreme Good. There is 
‘thus in man an inherent necessity of immortality. 
Other grades and forms of life show no such necessity. 
The monarch of the forest, head of the vegetable 
kingdom, doffs his crown at the end of a career 
wholly completed, the circle of his powers and rela- 
tionships fully traced. The development of animal 
intelligence comes visibly to a boundary line far this 
side of physical decay. Hence the race of the vege- 
table, and of the animal kingdom as well, is already 
run. No protraction of the individual’s existence 
beyond its present sphere could add anything to its 
completeness. Man, on the contrary, only beats the 
more strenuously against his prison bars as time 
glides away. His horizon widens with every step 
upward on the mount of experience and knowledge. 
He grasps the more avariciously at the riches of the 
unknown as lengthening days increase his small store 
of pebbles picked up along its beach. 

In these relations to God and God’s eternal purpose 
man finds the pledge of his immortality and a solid 
standing ground, of hope. His soul is seen to bear 
within itself the sealed orders that assure a cruise far 
beyond this landlocked bay upon the open sea. He 
may be confident, seeing that his port is already 
written in God’s chart, that he shall not drift aim- 
lessly toward that distant harbor, but shall be guided 
to it by divine tuition.and enabled to reach it through 
divine codperation. Secure of eternal life, the soul 
can laugh at time. It can sing with Milton :— 


XVI THIS MORTAL PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY 341 


“Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race ; 
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours, 
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet’s pace; 
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours, 
Which is no more than what is false and vain, 
And merely mortal dross ; 
So little is our loss, 
So little is thy gain! 
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb’d, 
And last of all thy greedy self consumed, 
The long eternity shall greet our bliss 
With an individual kiss ; 
And joy shall overtake us as a flood ; 
When everything that is sincerely good 
And perfectly divine, 
With Truth, and Peace, and Love, shall ever shine 
About the supreme throne 
Of him, to whose happy-making sight alone 
When once our heavenly guided soul shall climb 
Then, all this earthly grossness quit, 
Attired with stars, we shall forever sit, 
Triumphant over Death, and Chance, and thee, O Time.” 


Holding fast the conviction that the goal of man is 
God, we may go down into the vale of dissolution 
with the pzan of victory on our lips, —O Death, 
where ts thy sting? O Grave, where ts thy victory ? 
Immortality is an inseparable part of God’s eternal 
purpose concerning us. Assured of the one, we are 
also assured of the other. 

There is a spark at least of this divine fire in every 
human soul, and that no earthly clod can smother. 
Even the godless cannot, in the brevity of earthly 
existence, so strangle the life of God in their sen- 
suous, material souls as utterly to lose their original 
connection with him. Wherefore the wicked also 
shall outlast the dissolution that overtakes the body ; 


342 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP. 


for the article of physical death is simply a release 
from the temporal and the sensuous. It is oppor- 
tunity to blend more fully with the life of God in a 
higher sphere. It is opportunity also to shut that 
divine life more completely out. In Christ, the top- 
most crest of humanity has consciously attained to 
God. Without this actual contact, no matter how 
high man may be lifted temporarily by the spirit, as 
the ocean by the moon, he falls back again to the 
lower level. Those who do, for themselves, truly 
touch God in the inner fountains of their being are 
borne upward, like the particles separated in vapor, 
into a higher form of existence. This life the ungodly 
find not, at least in permanent form. They have no 
enduring relationship with the Fountain of Life. We 
are kept from death, as we are raised to life, only by 
the communicated life of God. Christ is the manifes- 
tation of this life, and its evidence to us. In the 
experience of Jesus humanity passed into new and 
_ greater relations. The individual, whose wants and 
activities had been bounded by the tomb, merged into 
the continuous life and the universal realities of the 
race. There is possible no higher proof of the future 
life than the consciousness of Jesus. We may dispute 
the historic evidence for the resurrection of his body, 
—the narrators might be misinformed as to the facts 
or wrong in their interpretation of them, — but the 
ideas of Jesus are too far beyond the conceptions of 
his biographers to have been misrepresented or in- 
vented by them. To his understanding, this earthly 
existence is but the portal of the genuine life. His 
confidence in the continuance of life is fitly voiced for 
our time in Joseph Blanco White’s masterful sonnet, 


XVI THIS MORTAL PUTTING ON IMMORTALITY one 


than which our English speech boasts no fairer 
gem : — 


“ Mysterious Night, when our first parent knew 
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, 
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, 

This glorious canopy of light and blue? 

Yet ‘neath a curtain of translucent dew, 

Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, 
Hesperus with the host of heaven came, 

And, lo! creation widened in man’s view. 

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed 
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find, 
Whilst flower and leaf and insect stood revealed, 
That to such countless orbs thou mad’st us blind? 
Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife? 
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?” 


The soundness of this belief is approved by the 
progress of the conviction through the ages, becoming 
strongest and clearest in the most spiritual. In pro- 
portion as men have felt themselves established in 
their Father’s family, through growth into sonship by 
overcoming the limitations of their lower nature and 
the hindrances of an errant will, they have increas- 
ingly felt that they were likely to go no more out 
forever. 

The communion of man’s spirit with the spirit of 
God grows truer and clearer toward the sunset, and 
the deepening shadows of evening render more ten- 
derly attractive the beckoning lamps in the window 
of his Father’s house. “TI feel in myself that future 
life,’ said Victor Hugo in reply to the Atheists. 
“You say the soul is nothing but the result of bodily 
powers. Why, then, is my soul more luminous when 
my bodily powers begin to fail? Winter is on my 


344 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP. XVI 


head, and eternal spring is in my heart. The nearer 
I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the 
immortal symphonies of the world which invites me.” 
At life’s boundary, therefore, instead of diminishing 
into nothingness, man’s energies are concentrated by 
death into greater momentum and rush through its 
gates like the foaming river through the Narrows into 
the open sea, or the eager courser through the dark 
archway of the barriers into the light and breadth of 
the race-course beyond. This assurance of immor- 
tality is an essential part of the constitution of man; 
it is the voice of God uttering itself within him, 
bringing life and immortality to light. 


CHAPTER XVII 
GOD WORKING ALL IN ALL 


LX. Social Organization perfected in a Future State 


TueE children in a household do not all occupy the 
same room. Under the royal roof-tree in ancient 
Ilion — 


“ Within, of one side, on a rew of sundry-color’d stones, 
Fifty fair lodgings were built out, for Priam’s fifty sons.” 


The world in which the oldest lives differs greatly 
from the little horizon that bounds the youngest’s 
vision. The generations and races of men are as 
children before the All-Father. Every son of God 
has his peculiar place in his Father’s house. In 
God’s one comprehensive being all the sons of men 
consist. They have been brought steadily through 
the ages into the power of a fuller and richer fellow- 
ship with him. 

This gradual development of personality is a lumi- 
nous ray thrown upon the vexed and vague problem 
of the relation between time and eternity. There is 
some reason to believe that, for man, time is that 
stage of his existence in which he is as yet but par- 
tially determined Godward. When a soul has become 
so rooted in the eternal life of God as to dwell com- 
pletely in that relation, looking backward with longing 
to no past, and expecting no future to complete its 

345 


346 GOD ALL IN- ALL CHAP. 


felicity, then time relations — the partial, the imper- 
fect, the preparatory — may be said to have ceased. 
In recognition of a vocation to high and remote ends, 
the spirit may easily regard death in itself as nothing 
—simply the cessation of certain temporary condi- 
tions. Life means the attainment of a desired end. 
But earthly life is a bundle of germs, a mass of bulbs, 
sprouting here it is true, but blossoming, if at all, like 
the century-plant, in distant years and perchance on 
other shores. Every capacity, function, power, aspira- 
tion, implies space and time in which to come to 
fruition. Our souls are thronged with ideals, hopes, 
longings, immeasurably beyond the brief possibilities 
of threescore years and ten.. They are the rudi- 
mentary manifestations of an earlier life than earth’s, 
and will continue their projection beyond this mun- 
dane sphere to which they are for the moment tangent. 
In assurance of this, man’s hope is justified. Life be- 
comes joyous and exultant with new potencies, and 
sublime with a new and measureless expansion. The 
narrow horizon of earth widens suddenly into an in- 
finite arch.~ A new power is experienced, which is 
able to transform the abysses of sorrow and the dark 
valleys of bereavement, as well as the painful curtail- 
ment of activities'which death creates, and show them 
to be gateways into another of those living-places, 
spheres of experience, enlarging realms of life, which 
formed the background of Jesus’ declaration, /z my 
Father's house are many mansions. 

In unfolding to the highest degree the political 
nature of man, there is the realization of the kingdom 
of God upon earth. Yet even that kingdom has its 
antitype in a higher sphere, in the city not made with 


XVII SOCIAL ORGANIZATION PERFECTED 347 


hands, eternal in the heavens. Toward that king- 
dom of God the kingdoms of this earth move steadily 
in the fulfilment of their earthly calling. That is 
the real terminus of the organic life of humanity. It 
is the continuation and perfection of the kingdom 
of God here. The bonds, the intercourse, and the 
benefits of political society will still condition much 
of our experience in the life to come. It is not 
without meaning that the perfected life of humanity 
is presented as a city, a city that hath foundations, 
whose builder and maker ts God. The perfect social 
state, a community of citizens, united in condition 
and destiny, is a part, as of the life that now is, so of 
the life that is to come. The perfected government 
will be there, and perfect citizenship. The full pur- 
pose of God can find realization only in the completed 
race of man. Humanity is one vast unit, and the 
succeeding generations are inseparably bound to the 
preceding. As the social state here is the condition 
of man’s full development, so will it be needed there 
for the further perfecting and preserving of these 
faculties. 

We may not dogmatize too confidently about de- 
tails, of which by actual experience or observation we 
know nothing, yet the possession of capacities in 
the individual soul which find no realization under | 
social conditions prevailing, or likely to prevail, on 
earth may justify the inference that the personal life, 
whose development is here thwarted and dwarfed by 
untoward circumstances, will be continued and more 
perfectly developed in a state to which this is intro- 
ductory. It is obvious, however, that one must be the 
same person in each state. Transformation of the per- 


348 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP. 


sonal self into something other, even though higher, 
is not the completion of that partially developed per- 
sonality which we now are. If the present constitu- 
tion of man is to be transferred and perpetuated in a 
new life beyond the act of dying, necessarily that new 
life will be social in its organization. As the political 
nature of man, or his instinctive impulses to work in 
codperation with his fellows, has built the social 
fabric of ‘the earth-life, so will that same social im- 
pulse build a true organized society in the life that 
follows. In this world the individual has substantial 
existence only in his essential relations to society. 
He is here born into institutions, usages, relations, 
which are common to all; the individual soul passes 
out of this stage into a like environment of institu- 
tions, organizations, traditions, common to all who 
are born into that higher life. 

Thus the idea of immortality is strengthened with 
our conviction that our conscious activity is linked 
to a greater opportunity for its exercise. The very 
enlargement of our intellectual perceptions, showing 
us the vast extent of the universe and the exceed- 
ingly subordinate part which this planet must take 
in the stupendous whole, and the brief moment in 
which the individual powers find opportunity in 
terrestrial life for their play and effectiveness, must 
strengthen our assurance that these fragments are 
yet indispensable portions of an ordered and propor- 
tioned whole in which each shall find its due and 
enduring place. How absurd this waste, how totally 
diverse from every principle and every process which 
we can observe from the earliest traceable begin- 
nings, to bend all the energies of a mighty, universal 


XVII SOCIAL ORGANIZATION PERFECTED 349 


historic process, almost measureless in its extent, to 
the production of a consciousness that enlarges and 
strengthens and grasps more fully the entire circle 
of events and truths about it until the very termina- 
tion of the individual’s physical career, only to be 
cut off abruptly and disappear! Of all lame and im- 
potent conclusions of which any reasoning mind could 
be guilty, this would probably be the most impotent. 
The alternative seems to be blind, imbecile material- 
ism, or the immortality of man. The human mind 
cannot accept materialism as the explanation of that 
wondrous unity and progress which it sees; it is there- 
fore, by its very constitution, compelled to expect a 
continued life for the human spirit, in conditions 
suited to its nature. 

Humanity endures and works in the conviction that 
its achievements pass beyond the boundaries of time 
and are borne onward into the eternal city. The 
kingdom upon earth is fashioned and its achieve- 
ments wrought in the power of an endless life. 
That’ kingdom is not a kingdom of this world 
only, but an inseparable portion of God’s universal 
government. In it the redemptive purpose of God 
from eternity has its realization. Man’s existence, 
however well rounded, is not completed by his earthly 
experience. The earthly and the heavenly lives to- 
gether make up the true human life; they are not 
separate lives, but different segments of the same 
life — the subject is the same in each, and the condi- 
tions have much in common. The same moral prin- 
ciples, the same rules of government, and the same 
principles of rectitude must of necessity prevail 
through the entire universe, The age-long prophecy, 


350 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP. 


Unto him shall the gathering of the people be, has run’ 
like the red line through England’s cordage from the 
vision of the first patriarchs. It has been the bur- 
den of history and the motive of the mightiest move- 
ments among men and the controlling social force. 
Now it has its fulfilment. Every type and prophecy 
and symbol and hope of the generations has staggered 
through all opposition, has overcome every difficulty, 
until the victory is complete and the old promise of 
the ages is fulfilled at last. | 

A Roman triumph furnished probably the most im- 
posing pageant that the world has seen. There was the 
leader, returning to that haughty capital, from which 
a short time before he had gone forth. His loyal 
legions, participants in his toil and danger, are now 
sharers of the honor of their commander. The sun’s 
rays flash back from stately golden eagles, borne high 
in the van. The wealth and wonders of subjugated 
nations are carried in the train; captive kings and 
rulers, representing races subdued in the four quarters 
of the globe, follow after. The welkin rings with jubi- 
lant music and the acclamations of Rome’s throng- 
ing citizenship. As the spectator, watching from a 
high tower apart, sees that gorgeous and massive 
column winding’ over the Tiber and through the 
Porta Triumphalis till it disappears along the Via 
Sacra toward the Capitol, so we, through the obscu- 
rity that veils the gate, may behold the glory and 
honor of the nations borne into the City Celestial. _ 


LXI. After the Power of an. Endless Life 


The complete manifestation of God in Jesus, as a 
visible portion of the eternal life, bathes with the 


“xvii. AFTER THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE 351 


glory of eternity the seemingly sordid moments of 
earthly existence. Because in him we have seen 
humanity living in God here and now, we are assured 
that we shall live in him always. Man’s life is no 
more than the unveiling of the life of God in individ- 
ual souls. The present life of the godly is the eter- 
nal life. The plastic essence and powers of this 
earthly existence are absorbed by man as he passes 
through its various planes and degrees, and the sub- 
stance of these, freed from their accidents, he is able 
to take with him into a new and fuller stage. 

One important feature of the mind must be re- 
membered when considering its future. That is its 
amazing power of adding to the stores of memory, 
and not memory alone. The other faculties also are 
capable of rising up to meet the enormous inrushing 
stream of facts and impressions, and organizing and 
vivifying it all into new constructive shapes and com- 
binations, absorbing experiences and acquisitions as 
the plant absorbs sunlight or the body food, and 
growing thereby. The treasures of the unseen world 
have, unconsciously to many of us, been used as the — 
current coin of this. Those treasures are still not 
expended. The powers of the unseen world have 
furnished all along the working energies of this; 
those powers are still inexhausted. | 

There are infinite resources in the personality of 
God, in the will of the omnipotent to carry mankind 
forever forward in a series of new conquests and of 
grander achievements. Even love, last and choicest 
fruit of the long evolution, is itself a want. Through 
all this earth-life, their desires have been the motive 
powers that have led men upward from lowest 


soe GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP, 


animal to highest human life. So that highest love 
to which the most perfected soul can respond, 
yea, even the love of God himself, is an insatiable 
yearning for the object of its affections. Each new 
access of knowledge of God, growing out of each new 
capacity for communion with him, only deepens the 
longing of love for still more perfect conformity, and 
thus the moral personality of man, led by love as its 
guide and incentive, expands and moves onward in a 
never-waning crescent of more perfect and more fully 
realized personality. 

Eternal life is the growing ascendency, through 
fellowship with God, of the imperishable spirit over 
the animal that is mortal. Those who would be 
deathless must join Schleiermacher in his determina- 
tion to grow stronger and livelier by every act, and 
more vital by every self-improvement. In Christ this 
domination was complete. The life and immortality 
which he brought to light were revealed through a 
human life that moved always in the sphere of the 
life of God. His life and immortality become ours 
on the same conditions. We may expect eternal life, 
not because we believe that Christ rose from the 
dead, but by just so much as there is in us of the 
spirit that is eternal. 

Against this eternal present as a background there 
stands out, as nowhere else, the immeasurable value 
of the human soul. It is hinted in the sculptures of 
Phidias, in the canvas of Raphael, in the songs of 
Shakespeare, in the music of Beethoven, in the ardor 
of Paul, in the love of John. But it can be fully told 
only in the achievements of the just made perfect, 
and wrought completely out only after the power of 


xvit AFTER THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE = 353 


an endless life. Eternal life is more than unending 
existence. It is a relation so clear and vital with 
things eternal, a life so separate from things of time 
and sense, that all time relations are swallowed up in 
fellowship with God. They in whose hearts is heard 
this deeper diapason are even now not dwelling in 
the sphere of the temporal, but in the eternal. Their 
own souls bear them witness that in their conscious 
and present cooperation with God their immortality 
is an assured and conscious experience already begun. 

The activities also of this life, glorified and en- 
nobled, pass on into the lifeto come. Associate with 
the Master-workman of the universe; man is not to 
dream away a life of empty and useless inactivity. 
Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, yea, saith 
the Spirit, for they have rest from their labors, and 
their works do follow them. The labor of imperfect, 
unskilful effort gives place, but the energies of the 
soul, trained in the activities of this world, shall 
cooperate in a service of God which is worthy of their 
toil. This activity has been an important factor in 
the development and discipline of the earth-life, in 
overcoming its ignorance and inertia. It will be still 
further turned to good account, in the work which 
shall occupy and be worthy of the powers of an end- 
less life, in the kingdom of realities and of just. 
recognition. 

Important, in this connection, is the scientific fact 
that the successive stages of life are each the preced- 
ing stage modified by conformity to the environment 
from which it has just arisen. The living organism 
is continually absorbing the external into itself. 


Every stage contains the results of all the earlier 
2A 


354 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP. 


environments through which the organism has 
passed. By long exposure the sensitized plate re- 
sponds to the dim light of stars so far off as to be 
invisible with the best telescope. The soul of man 
ultimately responds to and reflects the divine influ- 
ences that have been operative upon it through all 
the preliminary ages of his existence. 

Eternal life is, therefore, a moral condition rather 
than protracted existence. It can never be appre- 
hended in imagination by heaping up conceptions of 
duration. It is not improbable that a perfect blend- 
ing with God, the result of a long communion, shall 
take the soul, not out of its self-consciousness and 
individuality, but out of all conscious time relations. 
In this sense eternal life would become truly a power, 
a dynamic, an impetus, or causative force, cumulative, 
and more impelling as it goes. That is the power of 
an endless life ; a force none the less for being a vital 
force, partaking the nature of all force, universally 
cumulating as long as it continues. 

The imagination falters, however, before the en- 
deavor to realize to itself what may be the possibilities 
of a life that is endless. Here so much of experi- 
ence, of soul growth, of relationship, is continually 
being torn up from the roots, by separations through 
death, through interruptions of fellowship, through 
failing vigor, that earthly acquisitions, earthly affec- 
tions, earthly achievements, are at best poor, muti- 
lated fragments of that which abstractly they ought 
to be. Witha life not subject to these interruptions, 
how might the spirit roam at will through galleries of 
fact and event, continually acquiring new premises 
and fashioning new cognitions! 


xvii AFTER THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE = 355 


Freed from the limitations of time, it will at last — 
“have touched all worlds and felt them through,” to 
use the vigorous language of Horace Bushnell, “and 
made premises of all there is in them. It will know 
God by experiences correspondently enlarged, and 
itself by a consciousness correspondently illuminated. 
Having gathered in, at last, such worlds of premise, 
it is difficult for us now to conceive the vigor into 
which a soul may come, or the volume it may exhibit, 
the wonderful depth and scope of its judgments, its 
rapidity and certainty, and the vastness of its gen- 
eralizations. It passes over more and more, and that 
necessarily, free from the condition of a creature 
gathering up premises, into the condition of a God, 
creating out of premises; for if it is not actually set 
to the creation of worlds, its very thoughts will be a 
discoursing in world-problems and theories equally 
vast in their complications.” 

In view of the fact that personal qualities are 
achieved and preserved, at least by derived spirits, 
only in the stress of moral conflict, it is not impossi- 
ble that the heavenly happiness may consist, not so 
much of the absence of changes or conflicts, as of the 
presence of the developed power in the disciplined 
spirit to rise above all clouds, to put all foes under 
foot, and to triumph more and more completely in 
the fulness of abounding and never-ending life. 


CHAPTER XVIII 
GOD BECOME ALL IN ALL 


LXII. Man’s End attained in God 


THE idea of continuous development, as the pro- 
cess and means by which the existing order of things, 
man included, has reached its present stage, is beset 
by one danger. That danger is, that we shall come 
to think of development as continuous, a mere process 
ad infinitum without either termination or determined 
object. A development without reference to an end 
is merely a fortuitous revolution of atoms and no de- 
velopment. The alternative is clearly presented by 
Professor T. H. Green: “If there is a progress in 
the history of man, it must be towards an end consist- 
ing in a state of being which is not itself a series in 
time, but is both comprehended eternally in the 
eternal mind and is intrinsically, or in itself, eternal. 

The conviction of there being an end in which 
our capacities are fulfilled is founded on our self-con- 
scious personality —on the idea of an absolute value 
in a spirit which we ourselves are.” 

Only in the process of realizing its true end and 
personality does humanity break through temporal 
limitations into the greater range of eternity. At 
every stage of his existence man, in himself, is the 
consummation, so far, of a progressive manifestation 
of God. As that manifestation is more advanced, 
356 


CHAP. XVIII MAN’S END ATTAINED IN GOD 357 


the flow of personal interchange is more unhindered 
and the response of the human soul more quick and 
perfect, till finally God shall be all in all. Because 
man differs in degree only and not in kind, God can 
be in all, and all in all. 

As part of an intelligible cosmos, that which is 
imperfectly developed involves the conception of a 
progress toward a perfection at present existing only 
in the thought of the eternal consciousness. Yet 
this eternal consciousness is in constant contact with 
man. The revelation of God is the communication 
of the divine reason, forming its own body in giving 
life to that whole system of experience which makes 
the history of the human spirit. This revelation is 
the divine mind touching, modifying, becoming the 
mind in man; a revelation continuous as man’s 
life, and operating upon him in a process which is 
carried out to its gradual completion, through an 
exhaustless series of spiritual discipline, by all the 
agencies of a social life. Earthly life is not an end 
in itself, but becomes a factor in the coherent infinity 
of existence through the educative preparation in 
which the present is closely related to the future by 
a course of reciprocal interchanges which determine 
it toward its true end. 

Hence, although his spiritual nature is man’s assur- 
ance of essential immortality, yet he is spirit poten- 
tially rather than actually. His entire life is an 
advancing self-consciousness, in which he is attaining 
his true self through growing into knowledge of his 
relations to God. The dawn of this consciousness 
marks the point in evolutionary ascent at which 
man passes from the brute into the human kingdom. 


358 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP, 


Then first was manifested in him that germ of infi- 
nite possibilities in whose unfolding lie all the riches 
of his heritage as a child of God. The other end of 
the state begun in this lowly way is a perfected 
oneness with the divine spirit. The soul that has 
obtained even in small degree to this identification 
is superior to many things. ‘‘The wise,” said Yama, 
the Lord of Death, to Nachiketas, son of Gautama, 
“the wise, by means of the union of the intellect 
with the soul, thinking him whom it is hard to behold, 
leaves both grief and joy. Thee, O Nachiketas! I 
believe a house whose door is open to Brahma. 
Brahma the supreme; whoever knows him obtains 
what he wishes.” 

This witness of God grows with time. We trace 
the gathering fulness of spiritual utterance in the 
literature of history, in the moralizing influences of 
civil interests, in the fellowship of the Christian 
society, —in the countless influences of self-denying 
love, common worship, the examples of great souls. 
in great sacrifice, in the thousand tongues through 
which the one divine spirit even now speaks, though 
stammeringly, in the babel voices of social life. This 
witness grows fuller to the race as the ages roll on, 
and to the individual as his years multiply. It is the 
same testimony at the close as at the beginning, and 
it tends to deepen more and more from mere appre- 
hension into personal communion. The conviction 
therefore steadily increases that this communion is 
realized and fulfilled in death. Not to substitute 
another experience, but to fill and glorify this, is the 
end suggested by the workings of God’s spirit in 
men in this life. 


XVIII MAN’S END ATTAINED IN GOD 359 


An existence which should continue the individual, 
with his personal qualities and faculties unimpaired 
and even augmented, and yet fail of the power to 
recognize those souls which in this life have been 
so tenderly knit with ours by the ties of affection, 
would keep the promise of felicity to the ear only to 
break it to the hope. Indeed, the two ideas are con- 
tradictory. An essential part, and a large part, of 
man’s consciousness here consists of his relation- 
ships with others. Tearing those away would not 
leave his personality unimpaired, but torn and mutt- 
lated, its fairest proportions and fullest developments 
gone. It would simply mean setting the soul back, 
like a hand on the dial of a clock, to its starting-point | 
again, from which the weary round of self-develop- 
ment, through contact and relation with others, should 
begin anew. That one soul shall be individual, sepa- 
rate, self-conscious, implies that all shall be. There 
is profound philosophy in the poet’s deduction from 
the gradual awakening of the infant to its own indi- 
viduality : — 

“This use may lie in blood and breath, 
Which else were fruitless of their due, 


Had man to train himself anew, 
Beyond the second birth of Death. 


* * * * * * * 


“ That each, who seems a separate whole, 
Should move his rounds, and fusing all 
The skirts of self again, should fall 
Remerging in the general soul, 


“Ts faith as vague as all unsweet ; 
Eternal form shall still divide 
The eternal soul from all beside ; 
And I shall know him when we meet.” 


360 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP, 


God unchanging and man continuing in conscious- 
ness, the centre of life on earth and in ‘heaven must 
be the same. Life’s true centre here is communion 
with God. This is the word freighted with the most 
heavenly of earth’s experiences. This is the highest 
conceivable felicity. Man’s greatest privilege any- 
where is described in God’s promise to Moses: 
With thee I will speak face to face, as a man 
talketh with his friend. -This communication is a 
spiritual good which the world can neither touch 
nor take away. The soul’s experience of this com- 
munion is a ground of faith so firm that death can- 
not shake it. If there shall be in truth an eternal 
fellowship with God vouchsafed to man after this 
mundane toil is over, this will in itself constitute, 
as well as be conditioned upon, that oneness of God 
and man by reason of which God is able to be all 
in all. Holy though the Lord is, and dwelling in 
a high and holy place far exalted above sinful man, 
yet does he condescend even here to hold converse 
with men of low estate, and to reveal himself unto 
them. He who said, Let there be light, and there 
was light, is ever drawing nearer to men through his 
creating and preserving work, and graciously mani- 
festing himself unto all, that they may enter into his 
spirit and his Sabbath. Much more, therefore, upon 
them who, through patient perseverance, seek glory 
and immortality will he bestow that vision and know- 
ledge of himself which is eternal life. 


LX. What God hath Prepared 


If God abides and man abides, and their mutual 
relations continue, it follows inevitably that certain 


XVIII WHAT GOD HATH PREPARED 361 


great constructive elements of those relations shall 
continue also, and thus furnish that new state with 
something, at least, of familiar contents. To the 
mind of the Apostle to the Gentiles, many things 
of great value here, and many special gifts and pre- 
rogatives, might in all probability vanish, but through 
all changes, whether of life or death, should continue 
the great trinity of graces,— Faith, Hope, Love. 
His triumphant bugle-call is the challenge of a kingly 
soul, conscious of a vital union with God through 
oneness of spirit and aim, summoning us of lesser 
faith unto a bolder hope: 7 am persuaded that 
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 
nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall 
be able to separate us from the love of God. -The 
soul whose growth runs out along the lines of divine 
character and endeavor shall not find a place where 
these things no longer coincide. “If our plans are 
for eternity,” says Charles Kingsley, “knowledge 
and love will progress forever.” 

Such was all along the conviction of those who 
penned our Christian scriptures. They wrote out of 
a persuasion of divine things fashioned in their own 
hearts by the experiences, both internal and exter- 
nal, of their lives. They have therefore dwelt but 
little upon the end, or the beginning, or the particu- 
lar phases of manifestation through which the con- 
tinuous revelation of God shall pass, but they felt 
that the power at the heart of things was love, and 
that where love was the dominant spirit it would be 
well with the loving. Led by this star of promise, 
the loftiest souls of all ages have lent themselves 


362 GOD ALL IN ALL CHAP. 


with a divine enthusiasm to the bettering of human- 
ity, by fashioning those external forms in which the 
outward relations of life are embodied in social insti- 
tutions, though conscious that the true bliss of exist- 
ence lay not in these things, but in those solitary 
communings with God in which —with the burdens, 
the distractions, the noisy strife of the outward world 
at rest —the soul could enter into the secret place 
of the Most High. 

To say that God is love is but to declare in other 
terms that God is holy. After all, upon the holiness 
of God rests for its sure foundation all our assurance 
that the love of God endureth forever. If holiness 
should fail, love would have no certainty of abiding. 
The ecstatic utterances of Isaiah, the glowing per- 
suasion of Paul, the melting fervor of John, all have 
their foundation upon the deep conviction that man, 
when he is born into the universe, 1s ushered into the 
presence of a real righteousness, into the dominion 
of a holy will. From this firm abutment we fling | 
the arch of our assurance of life continued beyond 
the stream of death. For we know that wherever 
character is it must consist of the same qualities, 
and, whatever be our present ethical attainment, we 
shall enter into’ more perfect fellowship with him 
who is perfect as we grow into the likeness of his 
holiness. 

It is not a fearful thing, then, but a wonderful and 
a joyful thing to stand before the presence of the 
living God. “With every base desire subdued, every 
faculty developed, every capacity crowned, every baf- 
fled hope realized, men, not archangels but sons of 
God, shall hold sweet converse with their Father. ye 


XVIII WHAT GOD HATH PREPARED 363 


Not only will there be communion with God, but 
communion also with each other; earth’s two sweet- 
est experiences transferred. “ There will be glorious 
reunions as the sundered families reassemble in the 
home-land; and there will be glorious new acquaint- 
ances and precious friendships formed in that land 
of eternal life. It is an existence which sweeps out- 
ward and onward with the cumulative energy of 
spiritual impulses upon the spirits of just men made 
perfect, and with all the unfolding possibilities of the 
power of endless opportunity. 

In that land of consummation the broken frag- 
ments of earth’s life are joined. Its baffled and de- 
ferred hopes are fulfilled. Its unfinished plans find 
a field in which to flourish anew and to blossom into 
completeness. In that world is the perfection of 
what, in the coming ages, is yet to be approximately 
realized on earth,—the manifestation of God as the 
centre of the moral universe. Profoundly true and 
prophetic were the aspirations of the Revelator when 
he wrote of the Holy City, / saw no temple therein ; 
for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the 
Light of tt. This is the unity revealed in the sacri- 
fice of God for his entire creation; it is the Lamb 
slain from the foundation of the world, but it is the 
Lamb also in the midst of the throne. 

The giory of God is to be revealed in us. Powers, 
aptitudes, unfoldings beyond all present conceptions, 
await the perfected character of man, — ‘the sfirits 
of just men made perfect. We anticipate a fuller 
wisdom, a profounder knowledge, a deeper spiritual 
life. Anticipation will give place to reality, for we 
shall see face to face and know as we are known. 


364 GOD TALIESINGALL CHAP. XVIII 


This is the summary of the heritage awaiting us: 
We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he ts. 
Because the goal of man’s existence is approxima- 
tion to the Infinite One, his life, though eternal, shall 
never lack the zest and constant refreshing of con- 
tinual advance. We see in part, we know in part, 
must ever be the confession of souls that are spe- 
cializations of the divine nature, attaining unto their 
divine original through the process in which he be- 
comes wrought into their being. 7 

The great circle is complete. The far-seeing pur- 
pose of God has unfolded its mysterious contents 
through continuous processes till finally the start- 
ing-point is reached again. From God to God! ~ 
Humanity individualized and grown fully into the 
image of God, glorifying him in holiness and hence 
capable of enjoying him forever, returns to his bosom 
— the love of God realized. Man seeks his origin, he 
finds it in God ; he seeks his duty, he finds it in God; 
he seeks his destiny, he finds it in God. 


Whom he foreknew he also foreordained to be con- 
formed to the image of his Son: and whom he fore- 
ordained, them he also called: and whom he called, 
them he also justified: and whom he justified, them 
he also glorified. Now are we the Sons of God, and 
at doth not yet appear what we shall be; for eye hath 
not seen nor ear heard, neither hath tt entered into the 
heart of man to conceive what God hath prepared for 
them that love him. 


INDEX 


Ability, industrial, value of, 242. 
AGtE 103 35. S02 Ii 4T ou, S15, 
All things a part of God’s reveal- 
ing, 4. . 
Altruism and individualism equally 
impossible, 204; a means of self- 
culture, 288. 

Altruistic feeling, new fountains of, 
opened, 287. 

Analogy between social and re- 
ligious institutions, 178. 

Anarchy, why impracticable, 213. 

Animal basis of man’s nature, 80. 

Arts, material, the utilization of 
nature’s forces, 227. 

Ascent, climax of evolutionary, 
43- 

Atonement, modern conception of, 
i2c; 

Authority of the Bible, wherein it 
consists, 161; inherent in God 
as the source of all being, 
170. 


Babylonian labor contracts, 237. 

Being, the, of God the law of his 
manifestation, 23. 

Belief, any statement of, 
tory, III. 

Bible, the, a record of subjective 
experience, 160; how only rule 
of life, 163. 

Brawn and brain, relation of, 227. 

Bread, the prayer for, universal, 
22%: 


transi- 


Character wrought only by the 
soul’s own effort, 33; the meas- 
ure of the revelation of God, 
58; of Christ, his divinity, 68; 
not irrevocably fixed by death, 
95; the, of God the substance 
of morality, 199. 

Charity, changing conceptions of, 
270. 

Children’s employment, evils of, 
261. 

Christ not called God unquali- 
fiedly, 62; man’s judgment, 86; 
the meeting-point of God and 
man, 115; death of manifesting 
God’s yearning over man, I17, 
126; his spiritual attainment 
representative, 151; central po- 
sition of, 177; embodying the 
spirit of service, 296; the ex- 
emplar of humanity, 320. 

Christian conceptions of the uni- 
verse contrasted, 14; era, gen- 
eral convergence of history 
toward the, 72; spirit, the, 
transforming all activities, 318. 

Christianity, superiority of, 57; the 
fullest, not the only, revelation, » 
154. 

Church and state, relations of, 178; 
broad mission of the, 181; must 
be no anachronism, 182; deal- 
ing with human life as a unit, 
183; disastrous ignorance of, 
among wage-earners, 281. 


Brotherhood of all men, growing | Civilization, knowledge applied to 


sense of, 137. 


life, 245. 


365 


366 


Civilizations failing through ani- 
malism, 202. 

Class privileges tending to dis- 
appear, 246. 

Classes, the needy, still personal, 
270. 

Clear thinking, lack of, 277. 

Gola 10,8120. 

Columbus, progress in humanity 
since the days of, 283. 

Combine, right of all men to, 254. 

Commercialism in political affairs, 
dangers of, 295. 

Common sense of religion, 54; 
people taking possession of the 
earth, 268. 

Communion, man’s, with God in- 
creasing toward life’s end, 343; 
with God the centre of man’s 
life, 360. 

Communism, an unjust, impossible, 
214. 

Community, a true, the social ideal, 
204. 

Compassion, a science of, needed, 
272; redemptive power of, 301. 

Comprehensiveness of the ideal of 
man, 320. 

Conditions largely moulding life, 
304. 

Conduct, God’s will the rule of, 
193. 

Confidence in God not desiring 
changes, 27. 

Conformity to God’s will progres- 
sively realized, 200. 

Congregate worship, 
of, 182. 

Conscience everywhere approving 
or disapproving, 93; concerned 
only with duty, 198. 

Consciousness of Christ our stand- 
ard, 69; of wrong-doing among 
the ancients, 82; of lack of 
God universally evident, 105; 


importance 


INDEX 


of Jesus moving in the realm of 
vital relationships, 123; of God’s 
presence expressed in the world’s 
Scriptures, 158; of Jesus the in- 
terpreter of Scripture, 163; of 
kind a growing factor, 186; of 
relation to God the basis of eth- 
ics, 208; of God’s coworking, 
effects of, 296; of Jesus inter- 
preting God’s purpose, 339. 

Consumption the dynamics 
wealth, 232. 

Codperation of God with man, 48; 
a growing factor in social life, 
216; widening application of, 
240. 

1, Cor.415 55, 341. 

Corporations, obligation of the 
state to control, 294. 

Cosmic lines converging in man, 
ee 

Cost of maintaining the army of 
the unemployed, 253. 

Costly luxury of a criminal class, 
307. 

Creation, first real, in the produc- 
tion of man’s spirit, 18. 

Creed, the, a report of progress, 
165. 

Creeds, how far valuable, 166. 

Cross, the, the foundation of the 
universe, III. 

Cumulative tendencies everywhere 
visible, 188. 


of 


Dangers to society through condi- 
tion of the poor, 264. 

Death-rate in the quarters of the 
poor, 315. 

Decrees, doctrine of, ennobled by 
modern conceptions, 26. 

Deficient moral development the 
chief enemy of labor, 219. 

Definition of religion, 54; of jus- 
tice, 211; of labor, 249. 


INDEX 


Deity, what is essential to, essen- 
tial also to man, 60. 

Democracy, conception of God as 
common Father the soul of, 
176. 

Destitute, comparatively small 
number of the, 278. 

Development, the idea of, deter- 
mining modern thought, 8; defi- 
nitely directed, 15; toward a 
definite end, 356. 

Devil, the, no more, 21. 

Difficulties in proper conception 
of salvation, 95; removed by 
considering the Bible as litera- 
ture, 164. 

| )iscipline, value of God’s fatherly, 
147. 

Distribution the chief economic 
problem, 228; including intelli- 
gence and character, 246; of 
workers reducing numbers of 
unemployed, 255. 

Division of profits between labor 
and capital 231. 

Dramatic unfolding of universe 
from, yet toward, God, 8. 

Dualism replaced by the idea of 
God as immanent, 16; of good 
and evil spirits overcome, 21. 

Duration, altered conceptions of, 


Re 
Duties and rights correlative, 198. 


Each man having right to live asa 
man, 243; stage embodying the 
value of all preceding, 319. 

Early races, influences of, upon 
later, 72. 

Earnings of working-classes, 262. 

Earthly and the heavenly one life, 
349- 

Economic science, boundary lines 
shifting, 277; importance of 
healthful social conditions, 312. 


367 


Embryology a_ resurrection of 
ancient life, 40; argument in, 
for immortality, 334. 

End, man attaining his, in develop- 
ing his own personality, 196. 
Energy, the divine, returning to 

God in personality, 335. 

Enlarging the universe not dis- 
placing God, 330. 

Environment specially influential 
upon children, 308. 

Eph. 3:19, 64. 

Equal division of property destroy- 
ing most of its value, 291. 

Equality required only for equals, 
212; not absolute, but propor- 
tioned, 242; of property not the 
social goal, 345. 

Equitable distribution demanded 
by coéperative production, 218. 

Equity, only, asked by labor, 212. 

Era, the, of man marked by rise of 
mankind as a whole, 185. 

Eternal punishment, in what sense 
true, 97; life more than unend- 
ing existence, 96, 354. 

Ethical demands of a present judg- 
ment, 84; freedom, acquired 
power to will the right, 148; 
and rational in man’s nature 
one, 195; basis of right to work 
and fair wages, 254; Christ, the, 
present even where the historical 
is unknown, 286. 

Ethics dealing with human rela- 
tions, 197. . 

Events tending toward sovereignty 
of man over himself, 187. 

Every social attainment furnishing 
a nobler social environment, 319; 
son of God a place in his Father’s 
house, 345. 

Evidence of a sense of lack in 
man’s backward look for God, 
106, 


368 


INDEX 


Evil, elements of truth in theory of | Freedom of the soul necessarily 


inherited, 103; elimination of a 
practical affair, 304. 

Evils both outgrown and changed 
by direct effort, 309; of social 
life chiefly man made, 311. 

Evolution, reasons for unwilling- 
ness of some to accept, 38. 

Existence, man’s personal concern 
in meaning of, 12. 

Bix332/1 157360; 

Experience of Jesus genuinely 
human, 66. 


Facts, alleged, accepted without 
verification, 277. 

Faith, how an evidence of things 
not seen, 156. 

Faith-faculty, no special, by which 
to know God, 156. 

“Fall,” the, a universal experience, 
47: 

Familiar elements in the future 
state, 361. 

Family, the unitary form of society, 
171; the, in social problems, 
172; religious significance of, 
172: 

Fatherhood of God the background 
of all nature, III. 

Fidelity of God shown in his dis- 
cipline, 147. 

Finality impossible in science or 
religion, 322. 

Food, lack of, not a threatening 
danger, I9gI. 

Forgiveness, arbitrary, of sin im- 
possible, 92; of sins, a healing, 
120. 

Fortunes acquired through excep- 
tional opportunities, 292; repre- 
senting but small portion of 
values created, 293. 


continuous, 89. 

French peasants under the Grande 
Monarque, 237. 

Functions, beginnings of widely 
separated, 41. 

Future rising organically out of 
the present, 26; life disciplin- 
ary, 94; of the race inexhausti- 
ble, 190. 


Gal. 4: 4, 64. 
Generations, the, individualizations 
of one abiding substance, 132. 
Gen, 12.3; 360; 3: 19, 257318: 253 
3253 49: 10, 350. | 

Glory of God, the, to be revealed 
in us, 363. 

God, man’s idea of, enlarging, 3; 
no independent existence except, 
4; method of apprehending, 8; 
and revelation, present experi- 
ences, 13; visualized in the uni- 
verse, 15; interpreted by the 
phenomena of his manifestation, 
49; revealing himself among all 
nations, 52; known only through 
relations, 61; as transcendent 
and as immanent distinguish- 
able, 61; manifested, not com- 
prehended in Christ, 62; not 
received in first coming to his 
own, 80; agonizing in man’s re- 
demption, I11; man’s helper in 
all his ascent, 113; codperating 
with man’s will in self-surrender, 
121; man’s dwelling-place in all 
generations, 139; able to give 
himself only to consciousness of 
want, 145; disclosed as order in 
social and political institutions, 
169; revealed in the ethnic 
faiths, 323. 


Free spirit, once turned away, how | God’s method, Miltonic conception 


turned back to God, Iol. 


of, 6; approach to man limited 


INDEX 


by man himself, 57; approach 
to man internal, 80; whole char- 
acter exercised in restoring his 
children, 122; indwelling an in- 
terpretation of history, 132; will 
for us not limited by our wills, 
Sor. 

Good will dominating the whole of 
life, 195. 

Greatest advances most recent, 
188; days to come, 324. 

Greece, influence of, in preparing 
the world for Christ, 76. 

Growth of religious ideals, 55. 


Hab. 1:13, 108; 2:14, 174. 

Ba g.t2' 7575. 

Hardships, needless, 
earners, 263. 


of wage- 


369 


Historic advance in wages, 267. 

Historical continuity of revelation, 
70. 

History the record of God’s revela- 
tion, 71; revealing one universal 
life, 132; a story of the people’s 
enfranchisement, 237. 

Holiness, not inability, but unwill- 
ingness, to sin, 33; existing only 
as the free states of holy persons, 
142; at the heart of God’s Fa- 
therhood, 193; of God the basis 
of his love, 362. 

Holy Spirit, the, become tangible 
in Christ, 178. 

Home, threatened by industrial 
occupation of women, 260; in- 
fluence of the, upon character, 


313- 


Harmony with the end of his| Homeless and hungry multitudes, 


being, man’s 
193. 

Healing, the, of humanity a costly 
thing to God, 113. 

Heaven a commonwealth of spirit, 
138; a state of fulfilment, 139; 
a labor of patience to prepare 
men for, 143. 

Heavenly life, the, a life of con- 
summation, 363. 

Hebrew supremacy in sense of 
God’s presence, 159. 

Heb. 1; 1-2, 70; 1: 3; Tisveeo, 


rule of right, 


320; 4:15, 66; 5:8, 66, 94; 
5:9, 66; 10:7, 116; 1G3!27; 
B25 516s)3,°153° “Le 10, 3473 


12: 6,95; 12: 23, 363; 12: 29, 
95: 
Heredity and environment, rela- 
tion of, to character, 304. 
Hero-worship a tribute to the 
power of personality, 150. 
Highest of each stage continued 
in the succeeding, 337. 
Hildebert’s hymn, 6. 


2B 


the, 222. 

Hosea 4: 17, 97. 

How may the will of God be known 
practically ? 210. 

Human, qualities differing from 
animal only in degree, 42; the 
mark of the, 44; life the true uni- 
versity, 144; institutions realiz- 
ing the indwelling God, 173; 
nature not a fixed quantity, 191; 
progress, test of lying in the 
moral realm, 201; history di- 
rected by a social force, 208; 
beings, multitudes have no op- 
portunity to become, 216. 

Humanity, a vigorous sense of, 
characterizing the present, 137; 
history of, a record of improve- 
ment, 226; returning to God’s 
bosom, 364. 

Humanity’s cry for God answered 
in Christ, 70; great attainments 
yet to come, Igo. 

Hunger of a community, the chief, 
248. 


370 INDEX 


Idea of God, the, creative, 3; a| Influence of the Jews among the 


necessary factor of conscious- 
ness, 10; shaping all other 
thought, 136. 

Ideal state, the, now building, 
2P1s 

Idolatry, putting self for God the 
only real, 102. 

Ignorance of natural laws the occa- 
sion of discontent, 279. 

Immanence of God, modern view 
of, 4. 

Immortality not inherent, 96; 
grounded in God, 332. 

Improvement, recent, in social con- 
ditions, 238. 

Imputed righteousness a contra- 
diction, 120. 

Incarnation of God in man con- 
tinuous, 45; not making a new 
divine person, 64; practical value 
of the idea of, 66. 

Incommunicable experience, much 
of life’s best is, 152. 

Increased value of the man at the 
bottom, 187. 

Increasing gains of the working 
classes, 231. 

Independence of man actual, 
though relative, 18. 

Indifference of the miraculous ele- 
ment in Scripture, 165. 

Individual, monetary OMe of the, 
226. 

Individualism a force not yet de- 
veloped, 247. 

Induction pointing to immortality, 
329. 

Industrial power, a right or a 
responsibility ? 252; questions 
hastening to become moral, 266. 

Infallible authority impossible for 
a growing spirit, 161. 

Infinite being, one, manifested in 
the universe, 4. 


gentiles, 75. 

Influx of God’s spirit into man’s 
soul, effects of, 143. 

Information as a help to employ- 
ment, 256. 

Inspiration, helpfulness of a cor- 
rect idea of, 67; man’s, possible 
through likeness to God, 152; 
differing in degree, not in kind, 
1533; am inspiriting, 153; most 
fully manifested in the best, 155; 
an expansion of man’s spiritual 
nature, 155. 

Institutions of society a develop- 
ment of man’s constitution, 168. 

Intellect, impossible to include all, 
in terms of, e 


Intelligence, man’s, allied to cosmic — 


spiritual forces, 11; a principal 
factor in comfort, 234. 

Interests of self and others iden- 
tical, 204. 

Invariability of God, man’s true 
friend, 28. 

Inventor, the, placing a lever under 
humanity, 244. 

ISNAA 2; 3253 O30, hie 
159. 

Isolation no longer ethically pos- 
sible, 286. 


66: I, 


James I: 14, 304. 

Jesus the normal man, 64; subject 
to all laws of human life, 65; 
twofold relation to God and 
man, 65; chief among great be- 
holders of God, 109; conscious- 
ness of, the highest proof of 
future life, 342. 

Jew and gentile alike in ae 
wants, 56. 

Jewish race, influence of, in prep- 
aration for Christ’s coming, 73. 

Jews, distribution of, 75. 


ie. | ent 


INDEX 


Tab 2345359, £630 235 5,10. 

joel. 2: 31, 86. 

s0ni,t 7 1, 6032's 45. OS 350'9,,.033 
LMOSATs UL ssT Ty OO 13 t b 70% 
3: 19, 83; 3: 20, 88; 3: 36, 88; 
LG Ape ier Ee ee tery eh 
733 8: 29, 157, 1775 é 8: 46, 69; 
10 13,2875 #102130, 00 p12 1145, 
BBs. TA 2, 3405 5174045 00: 

EOI 3 293045475780. 

Joy in the presence of God, 362. 

Judaism receiving much that it 
transmitted, 55. 

Judgment, a universal expectation, 
82; a continuous process in the 
present, 83; the, universal, $4; 
past of those who turn to God, 
87; not confined to this life, 89; 
the, of Christ upon Christendom, 
318. 

Justice of God not requiring vindi- 
cation by punishment, 91; to 
the wage-earner, demand upon 
society for, 259; not demanding 
equal distribution of property, 
291. 


Kingdom of God, the, a present 
rule, 176; a social conception, 
179; and kingdom of man, no 
antagonism between, 184; of 
man, when realized, 191. 

Kinship, moral, between God and 
man, 63. 

Knowledge of phenomena disclos- 
ing the future, 28; of the laws 
of production and distribution 
needed, 230; of each other pro- 
ducing sympathy between class- 
es, 282. 


Labor, increasing effectiveness of, 
224; definition of, 249; move- 
ment, ethical no less than eco- 
nomic, 259; problem not a con- 


371 


flict of rights, 265; and capital 
the equivalents of each other, 
266; journals too little read, 
275. 

Law, the bridge between intent and 
result, 25; the vital principle of 
society, 170; the continuing will 
of the people, 198; the pre- 
requisite of freedom, 199. 

Laws, result of confidence in con- 
tinuity of natural, 28; of God 
self-executing, 90. 

Leadership and wealth, no un- 


tapped reservoirs of, 248; in 
social movements, need of, 
281. 


Liberty, true, the power to obey 
one’s higher nature, 149; one 
with morality, 212; to be pre- 
served in all social adjustments, 
235: 

Life, man’s earthly, not probation- 
ary, 46; of man finds its origin 
and end in eternal right, 84; 
of Christ sacrificial, 126; first 
fully exemplified in Jesus of 
Nazareth, 151; the only solution 
of its problems, 176; a bundle 
of germs, 346. 

Limitation of power 
283. 

Literature, all, exhibiting man’s 
search for God, 52; religious, of 
the race a witness to God, 
158. 

Logos, the, uniting God’s tran- 
scendency and  immanency, 
60. 

London councillors, description of, 
299. 

Loss to society through preventable 
evils, 314. 

Love the motive of God’s activity, 
30; including all the attributes 
of God, 30; the constructive 


to help, 


372 


principle of any satisfying ethics, 
199; itself a want, 351. 
Euke 16 2'12,:1023'233 34, 118. 


Man conscious of God, 10; asso- 
ciated with remotest physical 
processes, II; understanding 
God through his own personal- 
ity, 16; actually, though rela- 
tively, independent, 18; must 
ask whence and whither? 209; 
born to a vast inheritance, 34; 
a progressive manifestation of 
God, 38; the apex of the pyra- 
mid of earthly life, 39; the cul- 
mination of physical ascent, 42; 
the perfect, God drawn to human 
scale, 59; slow to become god- 
like, 81; when beginning to be 
human, 101; in moral youth 
holding apart from God, 102; 
gradually learning that God is 
his true centre, 103; hallowing 
God’s name by becoming holy, 
142; making himself in fulfilling 
his relations, 196; improving 
nature’s products, 250; absorb- 
ing earth’s powers, 353; spirit 
potentially rather than actually, 


357: 
Man’s position in the cosmos 
unique, 9; spirit the eternal 


consciousness under limitations, 
18; gain through organic one- 
ness with nature, 43; gradual 
participation in the divine, 45; 
moral progress accelerating, 48; 
life in God, 110; relations to 
God personal, 125; approach to 
God through personality, 143; 
development culminating in 
union with God, 177; dominion 
over the creatures, 185; life 
made up of concrete relations, 
196; life lying within God’s pur- 


INDEX 


pose, 200; character moulded 
by his work, 250. 

Manhood and wages correlative, 
267; of its members, society 
cultivating, 286. 

Manifestation of God, every, an 
approach to man, 63. 

Mankind, promise in present study 
of, 275. 

Mark 4: 28, 38; 12: 31, 207. 

Material and moral welfare, relation 
between, 244. 

Materialism the alternative of im- 
mortality, 349. 

Matte 6: O;"115;1131, 14262 10, 
1793 POET «223 2 Ost e Somat ee 
7: 20, 56; 102/30, 28834 11# 26, 
147; 14: 16, 238, ZAG S20 275 
257: 

Men administrators for each other, 

_ 206; growing more plastic as 
they develop, 310; bound to- 
gether in well or ill being, 317. 

Mercy, God’s counsel of, old as 
eternity, 31; perfect, the same 
as perfect justice, 95. 

Method of the universe’s produc- 
tion, 25; of Jesus’ attainment, 
65; of distribution, subject to 
ethical law, 249. 

Micah 6: 6-7, 113. 

Mind, a self-determining, implied 
as basis of phenomenal unity, 
9; the human, a completion of 
the brute, 41; the human, can- 
not know the unrelated, 61. 

Mind’s, the, power of assimilation, 
351. 

Mob, the, Victor Hugo’s plea for, 
301. 

Monopoly, limitations of, 240. 

Monotheism, _ true, transcending 
deism and pantheism, 5;  tri- 
umph of, 21; Hebrews, mis- 
sionaries of, 75. 


INDEX 


Moral discipline in relation to sin, 
32; apprehension progressive, 
50; blindness following error, 
92; science based upon the idea 
of God, 194; law the highest 
expression of reason, 194; ad- 
vantage of hard conditions, 203; 
dangers of low wages, 264. 

Morality, qualitative not quantita- 
tive, 197; progressive, 201; of 
those in evil surroundings, 308. 

Multitude, the, developed by re- 
sponsibility, 247. 

Multitudes, the, of the dehuman- 
ized, 306. 

Municipal murder, 263. 

Mutilation of earthly lives, 354. 


Narrow views by social leaders, 
dangers of, 280. 

Natural processes culminating in 
man, 63. 

Necessity, immortality of man an 
inherent, 340. 

Needs of the community matched 
by its supply, 284. 

Nihilism a contradiction of justice, 
2143 

Noblest souls surest that all has an 

_ ethical end, 29. 

Non-employment, economic reason 
for, 251. 

Non-ethical conduct a social det- 
riment, 218. 

Non-workers, 
B72: 


social _ parasites, 


Obedience to God’s laws its own 
reward, 92. 

Obligations involved in race unity 
often overlooked, 236. 

Obstacles to progress chiefly within, 
309. 

Oneness of humanity an important 
factor in social problems, 236; 


373 


of mankind, the world’s Magna 
Charta, 318. 

Optimism of the doctrine of an 
immanent God, 324. 

Organic structure of the universe 
all embracing, 7; unity among 
men, effects of growing sense 
of, 115. 

Organized capital a condition of 
progress, 239. 

Oriental character, defects of, 202. 

Overcrowding in cities, 313. 


Paradise, not lost, but to come, 
47: 

Parenthood, responsibilities of, not 
realized, 306. 

Partnership of labor and capital, 
231. . 

Passion, the, of Christ manifesting 
the divine tenderness, 124. 

Pauperism a social disease, 271. 

Peace with God through reconcilia- 
tion, 122. 

Persistence of God the ground of 
our assurance, 337. 

Person, God revealed as a, 59; 
necessity of God’s revelation as, 
62; every, represents capital in- 
vested by society, 269; must be 
the same in all states, 347. 

Personal ministry necessary in lift- 
ing up the degraded, 309. 

Personality, persistent sin may ex- 
tinguish, 99; perfect, actualized 
in God alone, 142; a man’s 
rights spring from his, 243; the 
best help through, 270; devel- 
oped only in social life, 288; to 
be held in trust, 296. 

Persons, chief function of society 
is to develop, 269. 

Perversion of charitable intentions, 
273. 

2 Peter 3:13, 209. 


374 


Philosophies all shaped by the idea 
of God, 3. 

Philosophy an attempt to correlate 
fact and experience, 13; three 
questions of, 29; of history, how 
possible, 71. 

Physical oneness of man and the 
lower orders, 39; deterioration 
in industrial communities, 316. 

Pity becoming a_ transforming 
power, 302. 

Plans for providing employment, 
254. 

Poor, hardships of the, 222. 

Population, increase of, cheapening 
food, 225. 

Poverty caused by lack of work, 
252; not always due to idleness, 
263; not divinely decreed, 270. 

Power, not a factor of moral gov- 
ernment, 107; the, of an endless 
life, 354. 

Prayer a natural law, 157. 

Predictive element in literature, 
297. - 

Probation, man not on earth for, 93. 

Problem of unemployed, chief cause 
of, 256. 

Problems of beginning and end of 
sin different, 98; of society a 
problem of personal relations, 
138. 

Production, problem of, solved, 
ypl 

Profit the motive power of modern 
economics, 251. 

Profit-sharing and codoperation, 
240. 

Progress of the multitude, 186. 

Property, distribution of, 229; the 
right to labor the most impre- 
scribable, 251; man’s individu- 
ality applied to external things, 
289; the desire for, a potent fac- 
tor of civilization, 290; realized 


INDEX 


liberty, 290; is responsibility, 
293; making man a coworker 
with God, 295. 

Prophetic aspirations of humanity, 
140. 

Psalm3320;,077 502 20ni0G,n 5k 
17; 533.74 2 20,1073 71002)3, 110, 

Public conscience awakening to 
social responsibilities, 314. 

Punishment not expressive of God’s 
relation to the soul, 90; the true 
aim of, 273. 

Purpose, God’s ultimate, a founda: 
tion of hope, 338. 


Quickening of life in the masses 
of men, 189. 


Race contributions to the spiritual 
growth of man, I55. 

Realization of freedom, 150. 

Realm of spirit, all men work in 
one universal, 140. 

Reason for Christianity’s buoyant 
hope, 208. 

Recognition of spirits in the life to 
come, 359. 

Redemption replacing the lower 
nature, 144; extending to all 
man’s activities, 321. 

Regeneration when experienced, 
tet: 

Relations essential to the unfold- 
ing of manhood, 307. 

Relationship to God, idea of a 
wholly filial, unfamiliar, 123. 

Religion, service of the evolution- 
ary hypothesis to, 12; based 
upon the divine element in 
man’s nature, 105; a misleading 
definition of, 174; giving law to 
all forms of collective life, 175; 
grasp of, upon all relations of 


life, 175. 


INDEX 


Religious instinct growing as man 
grows, 49; beliefs modified by 
environment, 51; phenomena, 
all, confessions of need, 104; 
indifference often due to physi- 
cal exhaustion, 182. 

Remedy must penetrate deep as 
sin, 119. 

Remuneration of all drawn from a 
common fund, 266. 

Representative character of Jesus, 
65, 114, 320. 

Response, the common, to a com- 
mon revelation, 56. 

Restoration, final, elements of truth 
in idea of,95; of the sinful, how 
effected, 118. 

Resurrection, bodily, of Jesus not 
essential, 342. 

Reels OfStse 14213; 35350er: 
22,1203. 

Revelation possible through man’s 
universal relations, 12; in crea- 
tion continuous, 15; through life 
increasing as life grows higher, 
60; completed in the normal 
man, 62; subjective not less cer- 
tain than objective, 336; the di- 
vine mind becoming the mind 
in man, 357. 

Rewards of industry to be more 
equitably distributed, 243. 

Right to be a man, the, what is 
involved in, 213; to do only 
what one ought with one’s own, 
293. 

Rom. I: 20, 82; 2: 7-8, 86, 360; 
8: 29-30, 117, 364; 8: 38-39, 
361. 

Rome, relation of, to the establish- 
ment of Christianity, 77. 

Rudimentary beginnings of various 
qualities, 41. 

Rule of three, the universe an ex- 
plication of a great, Ig. 


375 


Sacrifice evidence of man’s seek- 
ing after God, 108; Christ mak- 
ing the typical, 110. 

Salvation only in perfection of 
character, 120. 

PONG. 7 B12 TL sees eases y 

Science, modern, continuing Hil- 
debert’s hymn to God, 6; large 
expectations of, 226. 

Scriptures, Hebrew, the literary 
flowering of Jewish life, 73; 
of the race must spring from its 
experience, 74; express the God- 
consciousness of Israel, 160; 
statements of, to be tested by the 
canons of history, 165. 

Self-culture required for the sake 
of others, 302. 

Selfishness giving place to social 
service, 298. 

Self-limitation of God in producing 
the universe, 24. 

Self-punitive nature of sin, go. 

Self-sacrifice an investment of life, 
288. 

Self-surrender difficult, 107. 

Sin, the problem of, from the pres- 
ent view-point, 33; changed 
conceptions of, 81; the nega- 
tion of goodness, 81; three fac- 
tors of, 81; may destroy the 
persistent sinner, 97; only by 
consent, 104. 

Sinful man, the, not free, 148. 

Slums and their products, 312. 

Social element controlling present 
conceptions, 131; relations em- 
bodied in Christ, 197; forces 
spiritual, 207; remedies waiting 
upon moral advance, 220; in- 
stitutions under human control, 
230; problem, the, a problem of 
personal relations, 243; justice 
owing more than sustenance to 
the toiler, 247; classes owing a 


376 


INDEX 


debt of mutual knowledge, 274; | Spirit, increasing manifestation of, 


salvation attained only by per- 
sonal effort, 299; wrongs to be 
righted in the present, 308; self- 
preservation, the law of, 318; 
ideals should take account of 
man’s destiny, 319; elements of 
the future life, 347. 

Socialism, why not dangerous, 
215. 

Society organized about the prin- 
ciple of self-sacrifice, 112; and 
the individual conditioning each 
other, 203; retarded by its unde- 
veloped members, 205; bound to 
equalize the conditions of its 
members, 207; but three basal 
doctrines of, 209; finding it 
profitable to give work to the 
willing, 256; changed attitude 
of, toward its poorer members, 
283; implying individual liberty 
and private property, 289; to be 
reorganized for its members’ 
sake 314; providing for the full 
development of all its mem- 
bers, 316. 

Sociological, all questions tend to 
become, 209. 

Soil, untouched resources of, 225. 

Solidarity of mankind, 274. 

Son of man, coming of the, to each 
soul, 86; kingdom of, revealing 
the kingdom of God, 175. 

Sonship, meaning of, made plain in 
Jesus, 109; to God an achieve- 
ment, 144. 

Soul, the, God revealing himself 
in, 87; the, bearing within itself 
sealed orders, 340; possibilities 
before the human, 355. 

Souls, undeveloped, dropping back 
into God, 97. 

Sovereignty, the divine, enlarged 
conception of, 26. 


17; the, of God freeing men 
from their limitations, 149; the, 
of stewardship manifested in 
various forms, 300; of man 
above the scale of necessitated 
being, 334. 

Spirits, reality of finite, how con- 
stituted, Io. 

Spiritual elements in man’s con- 
stitution, 48; impulse in the 
human heart, evidence of, 52; 
ideals not realized in life, 107; 
elements in the ethnic faiths, 154; 
power underestimated, 282. 

Spirituality, Christian and pagan 
conceptions of, 323. 

Spiritualization of the universe 
accomplished, 14. 

Spirit-worlds, may be many, 331. 

State and society, relations of, 169; 
the, arises in the realization of 
rights, 170; limitations of power 
of, 258; the, possibilities of, in 
distribution, 258; not to legis- 
late against large fortunes as 
such, 293; the, subject to the 
same law of stewardship as its 
members, 294. 

Stewardship, the spirit of, needed, 
285; of property, obligations of, 
295; of personality, to be spe- 
cific, 303. 

Struggle for life transferred to the 
social organism, 206; of some 
kind never lacking, 310. 

Subjective authority of the Bible 
no less than the objective, 162. 

Suffering an inherent element in 
sin, 33; one of life’s chief minis- 
tries, 146. 

Sun, the, illustrating the self-sacri- 
fice of God, 112. 

Superstition counteracted by know- 


ledge, 37. 


INDEX 


Survival of the fittest a social law, 
272. 

Sympathy, revelation of, reaching 
lowest depths of being, 127; the 
true social bond, 282. 

System, present social, non-ethi- 
cal225: 


Teachers, something to be forgiven 
in all but Christ, 70. 

Teleology strengthened by the idea 
of development, 15. 

Temptation of Jesus representa- 
tive, 66. 

Tendency to organization, 169; 
upward throughout the social 
whole, 188. 

Tenement-house evils, 313. 

Theology comprehending the 
ground of historic movements, 
152. 

Three factors of the world’s sup- 
ply, 227. 

Threefold relation of God to man, 
2. 

a hes.4> 3, 20035.2) bes. 36.10, 
Lye 

Time.as related to spiritual experi- 
ence, 345. 

Trades-unions not able to solve 
problem of the unemployed, 
254. 

Transition from the successive to 
the organic, importance of, 
131. 

Trinity, conception of, modified, 
20; origin of doctrine of, 20; 
meaning of “second person” of 
the, 61. 

Tripartite nature of man, God’s 
revelation appealing to, 59. 

Triumph, grandeur of a Roman, 
350. 

Trust possible only because of 
uniformity of nature, 27. 


377 


Unconditioned, the, not also the 
unconscious, 16. 

Unearned increment, the, 241. 

Unemployed, numbers of 
253 

Unity of the whole, subordination 
of parts to, completed, 5; of the 
cosmos, how reproduced, 9; of 
spiritual life, source of, 50; of 
nature and history, 134; the 
divine, the constructive social 
principle, 168. 

Universal Fatherhood, growth of 
idea of, 135; Fatherhood of God 
increasingly manifest, 135; en- 
ergy welling up in man as con- 
sciousness, 333. 

Universality of the kingdom of 
God, 18o. 

Universe, the, God the vital essence 
of, 4; existing as modes of the 
divine activity, 16; being of God 
the constitution of, 24; an utter- 


the, 


ance of divine self-sacrifice, 
118. 

Unpaid service, amount and value 
of, 299. 


Unreason of conscious life termi- 
nating at death, 348. 

Unrepentant, the, remaining in the 
region of judgment, 88. 

Unrest of the working-classes a 
sign of advance, 239. 

Unsocial conceptions of life dan- 
gerous, 298. 


Vicarious elements in the universe, 
112; salvation impossible, 119. 
Vicariousness of Christ’s life its 

exaltation, 301. 
View-point, the new, 8. 
Virgin-birth, dilemma of the, 67. 
Vital identification of Christ with 
humanity, value of, 68; quality 
of man’s relation to God, 124. 


378 


Wages, per cent of, expended for 
food, 221; the struggle for bet- 
ter, 257; the problem of, far- 
reaching, 262; the standard of, 
266. 

Want and plenty existing side by 
side, 223. 

Wants, growth indicated by in- 
creasing, 268. 

Waste, suffering caused by, 234; 
the higher the organism the less, 
337: 

Wealth, amount of per capita, 223; 
rate of increase of, accelerating, 
224; not equitably divided, 229; 
proportion of, devoted to public 
use, 231; not a fixed quantity, 
232; made feasible by intelli- 
gence, 245. 

Well-being of man, as man, the test 
of social theories, 210. 

Wicked, the, and eternal life, 
341. 

Will, of God, the, all things exist 
by, 23; the seat of sin, 81; more 
than volition, 148; blending of 
man’s with God’s, 195; contents 
of a good, 195; of God for 
man’s good revealed in business, 
218; of God the arch spanning 
all worlds, 332. 


INDEX 


Witness to God’s indwelling grow- 
ing with time, 358. 

Woman’s personality added to the 
world’s assets, 259; industrial 
competition with man, effects 
of, 262. 

Work, view of, modified, 235; and 
labor discriminated, 249; a social 
bond, 249. 

Worker, happiness of the, gradu- 
ated by his work, 250. 

Workingman, the, underrating the 
student, 276; studious of in- 
dustrial conditions, 276, 

World, building, process of, con- 
tinuous, 7; drama, impressive- 
ness of its unfolding, 17; the, is 
what God is, 24; the ancient, 
ushering in the day of the Son 
of Man, 79; drawing closer to- 
gether, 137. 

Worlds, all, one in the being of 
God, 329. 

Worth of man’s moral nature in- 
creasingly recognized, 208. 

Wrongs sometimes permitted by 
outgrown forms, 241. 


Yama to Nachiketas, 358. 
Yearning of the human heart for 
» its Father, 115. 


THE GOSPEL FOR AN AGE OF DOUBT. 


By HENRY VAN DYKE. 


BEING THE 


YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING, 1896. 


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CHRISTIANITY AND IDEALISM. 


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sequence a contribution distinctively to social theology. 

“* Readers of the author’s luminous articles in magazines will not be surprised to 
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“‘A most welcome book. It is something far better and more desirable than its 
title would indicate. We think he deserves credit for something more thorough 
and lasting than he is willing to claim. At any rate, he traverses from end to end the 
whole region of religion, on the side both of theory and of practice, and explores it 
in the light of the science and thinking and spirit of our day. The author’s gift 
of telling utterance, his fine feeling, and lofty purpose seem never to fail him. He 
shows that he has in rare degree the gifts of the preacher, and that these chapters 
were first spoken as sermons. They lose in print none of their reality and practical 
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Man,’ contribute one notably new and crystallizing thought to a familiar discussion. 
It is rather, as its title indicates, an ‘outline. But it is not a skeleton. It is full 
of life, of blood, of nerves. In it the author reflects, in fresh and vital statements, 
the latest, and what The Oxtlook regards as the best, theological thought of our 
time. But this he does not as a mere reporter; he is a thinker who has felt the 
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which lie in modern consciousness, either as undefined experiences or as individual 
but not correlated truths.” — The Outlook. 


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SOCIAL EVOLUTION. 


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“The name of Mr. Benjamin Kidd, author of a very striking work on 
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. a book which no serious thinker should neglect, and no reader can 
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original mind.” — Zhe Times (London). 


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it is sustained and strong and fresh throughout. ... It is a profound work 
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who give it their careful and best thought. It marks out new lines of study, 
and is written in that calm and resolute tone which secures the confidence 
of the reader. It is undoubtedly the ablest book on social development 
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—‘to think over the questions of socialism, to discuss them with one an- 
other reverently and patiently, but not to improvise hasty judgments ’— will 
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It-is this because it not merely contains a comprehensive view of the very 
wide field of human progress, but is packed with suggestive thoughts for 
interpreting it aright... . We hope that the same clear and well-balanced 
judgment that has given us this hefpful essay will not stay here, but give us 
further guidance as to the principles which ought to govern right thinking 
on this the question of the day. We heartily commend this really valuable 
study to every student of the perplexing problems of socialism.” — The 
Churchman, 


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HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN 
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